It's a blight. Incredible how that place is still in business.

Also, it's threads like this when we miss wookie the most.

good

Since they don't have clearances and haven't agreed anything, they can't really be prosecuted for sharing any classified info. That's why the Washington Post et. all can publish Snowden's documents with impunity. I don't see how it is reasonable for the court to refuse to play ball in this situation.

Setec Astronomy

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Classification is an executive privilege. The current US government has an unhealthy appetite for obtaining evidence through extralegal means and blocking legal challenges by declaring those means a state secret.

It's not good just because it's being used on a bad person. Tomorrow it could be you.

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...cant tell if you think that is something that would be a good thing or a bad thing. ^

It's distressing that there are people who don't get this concept.

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The goal isn't to promote tolerance, that's just the pablum the media has fed you. The actual reason for hate speech laws is to lift the burden of prosecuting libel from the individual members of a class. They don't restrict freedom of expression any more than defamation laws otherwise do.

That said, Sir John A. MacDonald, the first Prime Minister of Canada, founded the Canadian Senate claiming that it would protect the minority from persecution of the majority. "We must protect the rights of minorities, and the rich are always fewer in number than the poor."

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cool story, but by pablum I was actually referring to the entire discrimination narrative that you've bought into, not specifically the promotion of tolerance.

None of that stuff matters. At all. That's simply the rationalization you are given because nobody wants to waste their sound byte trying to explain to average folks the extremely good and necessary legal and economic justification for the criminalization of the defamation of classes.

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Is that REAL legislation?? Like, has this actually been implemented somewhere? or is it just someones/ organizations, idea of what "tolerance" laws should look like?

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yipes...

Not sure what you're talking about exactly, but if by multiculturalism you mean lots of different cultures living together in relative harmony, it's certainly possible. Here in The Netherlands it's working relatively well. Yes, there are problems, but it's all very harmless compared to problems in for example the US. We have very mixed neighbourhoods with lots of different cultures living together with white Dutch people. Yes, we have a few 'bad neighbourhoods', but things like hoods are unknown here. If you go any place in the city, you'll meet a variety of cultures almost anywhere you go. Yes, there is some racism and prejudice, and of course when the economy is down, some people will blame the immigrants, but all in all I'd say it's definitely working.

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Well, let's think for a bit about what that sort of law would look like.

The motive for a crime is already useful for establishing mens rea. I think currently, even, if you commit non-specifically targeted crimes against members of a particular ethnicity, and the prosecution can prove that you're bigoted against them, it's sufficient. But it's a good idea to codify such a motivation. Maybe even pass a harsher penalty, if you're concerned that crimes against certain ethnicities are not adequately deterred by existing laws. This includes incitement, criminal solicitation, fighting words, and such other things, which are well and truly prohibited speech in most places - including the United States.

You also need something for libel. Members of a "disadvantaged" class can't generally afford to launch a class action lawsuit in order to defend themselves, so it's important for the state to accept that responsibility. You also need to make free legal counselling available to the victims, so they are able to successfully navigate the bureaucracy in order to file a complaint, since this isn't the sort of crime that the police are equipped to handle.

And in order to plug up some loopholes, you need to look at euphemistic language. So you really need to punish the advocacy of certain political movements and ideologies that are "not just about genocide", but wink wink, nudge nudge. Neo-nazis aren't exactly advocating for Keynesian market stimulus, if you know what I mean. But you can't just throw 'em all into prison; you'll also need a different punishment for minors, since kids are really just parroting what their dumbass parents told them. Make racist kids take some sort of rehabilitative course to show that brown people aren't all that scary.

there, a perfectly reasonab oh OOPS that's the European law

Gotta be honest dude, that read like a quote from Mein Kampf.

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To criminalize the defamation of a class.

And to codify things that are currently already illegal (or tort offenses), which is vastly preferable to the common law wonderland where they currently live.

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The entire basis of Big-F Fascism, like Mussolini and Hitler Fascism, was the idea that different races can't mix because they don't think alike. They thought it was best if like people lived with like people, and unlike people lived elsewhere. That's why the Fascist emblem is a bundle of sticks, because sticks are stronger when they're all bundled up together. Nothing personal, but you literally just advocated for Adolf Hitler's political agenda.

The contention around hijabs and burqas in Europe, just like the contention in Quebec, is because they are hilariously, hilariously racist. Even if I can't convince you, and you still hate this law, you don't have anything to worry about because it's never going to happen. Europeans love their racism too much. Even if it passed most countries would probably add exceptions for crimes against Roma.

Thats what I tried to give you?

wow, hmm... freedom of education in accordance with religious traditions. that seems like it is just begging for problems.

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Well in "reality" immigrants naturalize very readily and quickly. The simple act of voluntarily choosing a different country and making it your own introduces all kinds of selection bias into the process. People with a hard-on for sharia are probably not going to move to a country that shows bare **** in an orange juice ad.

The issue with Britain and France is that ethnically non-European immigrants are essentially banished to ghettos, denied employment and defamed daily by incredibly racist, right-wing tabloids. They are being actively marginalized by the country they chose. The entire burqa fear is just another manufactured excuse for denying brown people access to our culture. Despite how hard Rupert Murdoch wants to spin the riots and outcry as brown savages just being brown savages, there's a lot of legitimate, well-earned anger and frustration there.

(Canada has many of the exact same problems, although much of it is concentrated in Quebec - which, not coincidentally, is where our racist screed tabloids are published.)

Yeah, i completely agree with the statement you just made. Only, what that quote seems to be saying is that education would be required to be presented in a way that is sensitive to Joe Schmoe's "religious traditions". or is that not what "freedom of education in accordance with religious traditions" means?

So is "European countries are going to implement Sharia law because of political correctness!" the "Obamacare is going to euthanize your grandparents" of European politics or what

Lots that I want to respond to in this thread, but it's late and I'm tired so I'm just going to reply to the last post I saw and maybe pick up the rest later.



"American states are going to implement Sharia law because of political correctness!" is already a real thing in American politics, depressingly enough, and worse, it predates "Obamacare is going to euthanize your grandparents."

Well, we have lots of muslims here. Mostly Turkish and Moroccan people. Culturally, there are definitely some clashes with western culture, in particular with respect to the role of women and the acceptance of homosexuality. But it's not a major issue, unlike our right wing would want you to believe. There are differences, but for the most part there's mutual respect. Muslims who were born here (2nd, 3rd and later generations) are more adapted to western society. The women will wear high heels, skinny jeans and make-up, but they still wear their scarf around the head with pride. Our schools are for the most part mixed. I grew up in a middle class neighbourhood, and in my class there were Dutch, Italian, Turkish, Moroccan, Surinamese, and kids from the Dutch Antilles and Cabo Verde. Friendships were very mixed... everybody basically hangs out with everybody. I used to come in their homes and stay for dinner, and vice versa. This is not exceptional here, it's very much standard for average to big cities. In school, we spend a lot of time talking about the differences in our cultures and about the different things we learn at home. And sometimes that clashes, in the sense that there's a significant percentage of muslims struggling with for example the acceptance of homosexuality. Often times their parents are first generation, and more old-fashioned, teaching their children that homosexuality is a sin, while in school the kids are being taught it's wrong to judge and that people should accept each other regardless of sexual orientation.

So yes, in some ways there's a bit of homogenization, but in other ways they're still different cultures. But that does not mean people can't respect each other. I think it's inevitable that there's adaptation from both sides. But no population will ever be truly homogenous, not even if they're from a single culture.

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Do you know any of "these people"? Some of the things you're saying are almost exactly the same as the slurred drunken rhetoric we hear in England from EDL marchers. If what you know about the Muslim population in Europe is gleaned from newspapers then I can only assure you that the bulk of it is complete and utter toss that focuses on an idiot minority that has no correlation with the interactions everyone else has with Muslims on a daily basis.

If you'd like to get a feel for how bad the tabloids are (at least here in the UK), I really recommend getting hold of Flat Earth News by Nick Davies (same guy who broke the News International phone hacking scandal). The stuff on the Daily Mail, our 2nd best selling newspaper after Murdoch's The Sun, will really open your eyes as to how lazy and racist it is. Incidentally the book is great for a more general US-relevant window into the decline of investigative journalism and the rise of PR "churnalism" in its stead.