Anne van Alkemade

BrainCandy, 3 months ago

Who gave you the idea that we were free?
Free from what? Free to what?

The Australian Constitution does not have any express provision relating to freedom of speech. In theory, therefore, the Commonwealth Parliament may restrict or censor speech through censorship legislation or other laws, as long as they are otherwise within constitutional power. The Constitution consists mainly of provisions relating to the structure of the Commonwealth Parliament, executive government and the federal judicial system.(6) There is no list of personal rights or freedoms which may be enforced in the courts. There are however some provisions relating to personal rights such as the right to trial by jury (section 80), and the right to freedom of religion (section 116).

The draconian laws introduced by the previous government still stand.
If you witness anyone criticising out troops in Iraq and do not inform the police YOU face up to 5 years imprisonment.

...

Anne van Alkemade in reply to BrainCandy’s comment, 3 months ago

I know we don’t have freedom of speech in our constitution. I have written hundreds of thousands of words on Australian Law, Defamation, Public Speaking etc etc. Compared to many countries, we do enjoy great freedoms. The latest threat to our ‘relative’ freedom is regarding the World Youth Day and the NSW government’s move to silence any discension. Have a read of the article BrainCandy.

BrainCandy, 3 months ago

yeap, I’ve heard the story on the radio. I am not THAT surprised. Most of the pollies love their daily piece of Jesus and I can see a lot of reasons to protest and even ridicule the event.
The ban is more stringent than the laws during the OPEC meeting.

I’ve lost my faith in western democracies a looooong time ago. Nothing will surprise me anymore.

Subversion and dissent vs. complacency.

Anne van Alkemade in reply to BrainCandy’s comment, 3 months ago

Agreed. Apathy and complacency reign supreme.

BrainCandy, 3 months ago

yep. And the moment you open your mouth in public people just look at you strangely, and walk off. You can’t even have a decent argument anymore.
Nobody cares about anything, but just mention the footy or interest rates and you’ll be the centre of attention.

A long time ago I saw a graffiti in a toilet in Poland:
“Lack of political commentary on public toilet walls points to emotional death of the society”

Anne van Alkemade in reply to BrainCandy’s comment, 3 months ago

I used to love the dunny walls at Uni. Better than discussions in Philosophy 101.

Clinton Tyree KM@, 3 months ago

Well. I don’t think freedom of speech as some would have it can ever exist.

Basically human rights work by system of priorities. Something like inciting people to burn down Jewish shops, or murder black people as a matter of “freedom of speech” is at odds with the freedom of the individual not to be treated thus.

So the need to protect takes priority over the right to say.

As, I think it would no doubt be fairer to protect you IF I were to start setting up loads of website stating that you were transgender Satanist who drank goats blood… or some less obvious slander… again that’s pretty clear cut.

That’s a pretty clear cut case and it’d take a willfully obtuse position to deny there is much sense in such a mechanism.

However, like all things in life, there are few clear cut boundaries, though I do think a commonsense approach of “does this constitute a crime?” would be a good place to start.

So, in a sense, given that the whole argument (as usual) has had its vocabularly perverted by extremists trying to slip in the backdoor by conflating what you allude to with “freedom of speech” (see Universal Declaration of Human Rights) with what they usually call “free speech”, which despite its name isn’t some socialist movement against the commercialisation of talking, but rather merely saying “It is our right to say whatever the hell we like about whoever the hell we like irrespective of the consequences!” Which is just utter bullshit, because no one would tolerate that attitude at a personal level let alone a legal level. So that problem has in recent years evolved into ‘Hate speech’.

But again, the perversion by people undermining human rights begins again. So we have on one hand Neo-Nazis claiming it is their human rights to defame teh victims of the NAzis and to perpetuate/incite racial hatred and then ironically you have people like the Anti-Defamtion League (ADL) who under the guise of defending Jews from the ‘hate speech’ of Nazis basically act as a weapon to silence any critics of ISrael and human rights abuses.

But anyway, your point. No it’s fucked up. You can’t have a situation where there are no real tangible victims being commited being handled as a human right sissue. Such crap undermines the concept and credibility of human rights. A T-shirt saying that (1) Catholicism is crap or (2) the Pope is a mass murder is basically (1) a personal evaluation of a belief system that does not incite crime and (2) an indictment that could actually be fairly argued on the basis of evidence (and at worst a civil matter between individuals… were the Papal stance on HIV & condoms not true).

So basically you have once more politicians abusing human rights for personal and political (see financial) gain.

This is what happens when democracy is not really democratic because it is not really accountable to the electorate.

Anne van Alkemade, 3 months ago

This is an absolutely awesome, fantastic response Clinton. I hope you have posted this in the AGent Provocateur thread. It’s so true. (sorry about the ‘non’ reply here, my reply button isn’t working for some reason .. again.