On Jul 24, 3:10 am, Pat O'Beur <Pat.O'B...@frogland.fr> wrote:
> Nytimes.
> By JIM YARDLEY > Published: July 24, 2008
> BEIJING ? The Chinese government will permit public protests inside three > designated city parks during next month?s Olympic Games, but demonstrators > must first obtain permits from the local police and also abide by Chinese > laws that usually make it nearly impossible to legally picket over > politically charged issues.
On Jul 24, 3:10 am, Pat O'Beur <Pat.O'B...@frogland.fr> wrote:
> Nytimes.
> By JIM YARDLEY > Published: July 24, 2008
> BEIJING ? The Chinese government will permit public protests inside three > designated city parks during next month?s Olympic Games, but demonstrators > must first obtain permits from the local police and also abide by Chinese > laws that usually make it nearly impossible to legally picket over > politically charged issues.
Free Speech Fades Away: France and the New Repression
by Russell Berman · Add a comment
The action of the French National Assembly, to criminalize any statements that deny that the mass killings of Armenians during and after the First World War constituted genocide, raises many problems, but foremost among them is the threat to free speech.
While the vote was lopsided in favor (106 to 19), most of the 577- member chamber did not vote at all. Nor is it likely that the proposal will proceed successfully through the upper house or be adopted by the Chirac government, which has criticized it. When all is said and done, this may have only been an electoral ploy by the Left (which supported the bill): it is a way to jump on the popular bandwagon against the expansion of the EU to include Turkey, without fishing in the racist waters of the far right or adopting theological arguments about a Christian Europe. It's ideologically easier to irritate the Turks through a symbolic gesture about Armenia, in the hope that an irritated Turkey will then turn away from Europe.
mange (free thought and speech equals prison time in Nazi France!!!)
On Jul 24, 3:10 am, Pat O'Beur <Pat.O'B...@frogland.fr> wrote:
> Transfert de technologies US/Chine?
Freedom of Speech in France
One more reason to despise the French state (not that there was any shortage of reasons to do so before).
A French court agreed yesterday to consider a complaint brought by a conservative MP against the rapper Monsieur R for referring to France as a slut in a song.
The court in Melun, south of Paris, said it would rule early next year on the complaint filed by Daniel Mach, MP for the Pyrénées Orientales, who said he had the backing of 150 MPs but was bringing the action "on my own personal account, because I feel assaulted by these insults. They are a real attack on the dignity of France and of the state."
[...]
Mr Mach alleged that on the song FranSSe, from Monsieur R's latest album Politikment Incorrekt, Monsieur R - whose real name is Richard Makela - raps: "France is a bitch, don't forget to fuck her till she's exhausted/You have to treat her like a slut, man." At another point, Mr Makela says: "I piss on Napoleon and on General de Gaulle."
Since when have states had "dignity" to be attacked? It's scary that one can actually be taken to court for saying something like this in a supposedly free and open society, but that is exactly the problem with France: it is not an open society, but an ossified statist monstrosity which provides neither opportunity for newcomers nor freedom for them to fully express themselves either in speech or in dress.
On Jul 24, 3:10 am, Pat O'Beur <Pat.O'B...@frogland.fr> wrote:
> Nytimes. > Transfert de technologies US/Chine?
"THE DUMBEST RELIGION, after all, is Islam."
So spoke best-selling French author and provocateur Michel Houellebecq just days before September 11, 2001, in an interview with the magazine Lire. He also called the Koran "mediocre" and said he considers the scriptures of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all to be "texts of hate." His statements, not surprisingly, infuriated Muslim organizations. Here's what is surprising: In September 2002, Houellebecq was brought before a criminal court for uttering those words. He faced up to a year in prison or a $51,000 fine.
In the U.S., Houellebecq would be protected by the First Amendment. Not so in France. Four Muslim groups, along with an organization called the Human Rights League, pressed charges, arguing that the author's statements incited racism. A 1972 law "bans hate speech, making racial defamation and provocation to racial hatred or violence punishable by criminal law," according to a 2001 Brookings Institution paper cited on the weblog Emmanuelle.net. Lire was also charged for publishing the interview.
On Jul 24, 3:10 am, Pat O'Beur <Pat.O'B...@frogland.fr> wrote:
> Transfert de technologies US/Chine?
In France, teachers join Muslims and homosexuals as a privileged group who must not be criticized:
“A website went live in January allowing students in France to grade their teachers online based on six specific criteria such as motivation, interest, and clarity. The teachers were named. The students, for obvious reasons, remained anonymous.
This did not go over well with teachers. The main teachers’ union sued to shut down the site, and a French trial court ruled in its favor, citing that freedom of speech ends when it affects teaching and that an uncensored discussion forum risked “becoming polemical.” ….
Freedom of expression is guaranteed in France and the other 46 countries of the Council of Europe by the European Convention on Human Rights, which states that “this right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas.”
On Jul 24, 3:10 am, Pat O'Beur <Pat.O'B...@frogland.fr> wrote:
> Transfert de technologies US/Chine?
"I've had enough of being led by the nose by this population that is destroying us, destroying our country by imposing its acts."
It could have been worse. The judge rejected the prosecutor's recommendation that Bardot be imprisoned for two months. Instead, he ordered the fine, some "restitution" to a couple of Muslim organizations, and that Bardot reprint the court's order in her newsletter (in which she had published her original letter to Sarkozy). This was Bardot's fifth conviction on similar charges.
Certainly France, as a sovereign nation, is entitled to enact its own laws. But given how freely the French criticize our laws and our policies, I shall return the favor. How insane is it that a human being can face be locked in jail for writing words on a piece of paper. I think Tom Cruise spouts some bizarre stuff sometimes, as do Rosie O'Donnell, Alec Baldwin, and way too many other celebrities. And that looniness does some damage. When Rosie says on live daytime television to millions of viewers that it's impossible for "fire to melt steel," that breeds additional idiocy and encourages radical, harmful beliefs in the body politic. But I don't think she should be locked up (or fined) for it.
