French blogger under attack

The principles involved are no different from any other libel trial, I suppose, or have either plaintiffs or defendant made a point of the fact that the allegations are being made electronically?

At least he’s not in Russia, where a newspaper reporter was recently sentenced to 5 years in prison for supposedly libeling a local politician.
http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2005/06/20/001.html

Now if only that reporter could have looked into the politician’s heart, I’m sure all that unpleasantness would have been avoided.

In some countries journalists are a part of the elite, so there’s no reason to challenge and everyone is happy.

Look at the rankings for press freedom before jumping to conclusions about which countries best protect their elites. (Admittedly these are for 2002, maybe France has slipped since then?)

The poor ranking of the United States (17th) is mainly because of the number of journalists arrested or imprisoned there. Arrests are often because they refuse to reveal their sources in court. Also, since the 11 September attacks, several journalists have been arrested for crossing security lines at some official buildings.”

Which journalists have been arrested and imprisoned? I’d like more detail on that from Reporters Without Borders, whatever that may be. And why should carrying a press card exempt you from observing security protocols?

Heh, and I see Germany ranked hire than the US (by 10 places). A country where saying something positive about the Nazi’s, or saying the holocaust was “overblown” will get you a jail sentence. Just another laughabley quaint NGO, with their sheep-like anomosity of the US on public display.

abb1- I don’t know much about RSF or their backing. But, I know they’ve done enough good work in Russia to earn some respect from me.
Billings- Judith Miller from the NY times spent some time in jail recently for refusing to name a source. I’m sure there are others. I must admit that I can’t cry many tears for her, though, after her criminally incompetent reporting leading up the Iraq war.

See this: http://www.counterpunch.com/barahona05172005.html

Matt, I vaguely remember that we already discussed this once.

>So are you calling for free speech for the German
>neo-Nazis’? Just wondering…

If he isn’t, I am. Who you are, and what you have to say, isn’t relevant. Political speech is political speech, and shouldn’t be a matter for law enforcement. The proper response to neo-Nazis is to point out that they are morons, not to suppress them, and by so doing, make them seem romantic and rebellious, rather than brutal and stupid.

jet, Rvman: Strange, I’m getting exactly the opposite observation in my country. Racist speech is completely banned, which brings the number of cases of racist violence to something like nil.

And besides, jet, since everyone has to die some day, so please go and die now. Thank you.

I support the freedom to blow whistles on corruption and nepotism, but I simply won’t support the freedom to spread murderous philosophies.

Well, I’d rather thought the situation in Germany had something to do with the facts of its C20th history rather than being entirely the fault of hate crime laws making neo-Nazis look “romantic and rebellious”, like teenage smokers, but I will defer to jet’s and rvman’s sociological expertise.

I also think you can draw the line between legitimate political speech and denying an established historical fact for the purposes of stoking racial hatred.

I see the CT posting containing the word “French” in the title.

I immediately wonder how many comments it will take before somebody seizes the opportunity to take one more pointless, gratuitous swipe at “the French” and their evil, treacherous ways.

I silently chastise myself for being so cynical–you might expect that level of silliness from ButtPlug & RamRod (or whatever the hell they’re called) over at PowerLine, but this is Crooked Timber, f’cryin’ out loud.

Even cynical old me is surprised at the results: Got it in one!

Bonus for Des von Bladet: Moules frites. Waffles. Plastic Bertrand. Jacques Brel singing “Le plat pays.” Satisfied?

But you see, Uncle Kvetch, the French are not like us… A certain je ne sais quois… the French élites… the 4 hour lunch break… if it wasn’t for us you’d all be speaking German…

des von bladet, bi, engles.
Typical European-style comical snobbish responses. Socialism and groupthink, like peanut butter and jelly, hamburgers and cheese, flies and shit. Bi, you are particularly foolish. I have no idea where you live, but I’d say places like Denmark and France were experiencing a sharp rise in racist violence (although your EU minders probably sanitize the numbers to appear as normal crimes).

US: I may disagree with every word you say, but I will defend unto the death your right to say it.

Europe: He shouldn’t have a right to say those nasty things that are so obviously wrong, I’m telling my mommy.

Yout can’t get more anti-thetical to American ideals than state sponsored censorship. Bi, perhaps I will die today, and it is telling that simpley because I disagree with you, you hope it is today. What does it say about your beliefs (or you in particular) that you wish death upon those who disagree?

Fetchez la vache!

:)

Thanks for putting Voltaire in Team America versus the French commies. That’s just perfect.

Touché!

Jet: Your relentless arseholeisme notwithstanding, Belgium will always be funny, and has certainly been prominently featured on this blog lately.

(I freely concede that outside of my ineradicable narcissism I no longer bother to read much of your bizarre dribbling; if I neglected an actual point that you somehow managed to have, that was probably why.)

Jet: Can I pretend that I wish I did? Thanks very.

Assuming that your invocation of Voltaire (1) was indeed an intentional attempt at irony you might have noticed that American law does not actually reflect this principle. The government does not defend unto the death anyone’s right to say anything: it merely refrains from using its own coercive power to prevent her from saying it. So you can have a situation in which powerful non-state actors stifle speech with impunity and the state does nothing to stop this. And yes, in France and other social democracies the state probably does do more to actively defend free speech by means of providing subsidies for public broadcasting, film, etc which act as a counterbalance to the corporate media. On the other hand, Nazi hate speech is circumscribed by law in France and Germany. I think when you weigh up economic as well as purely legal factors it’s pretty clear who comes closer to Voltaire’s (1) maxim and it’s not the US.

(1) quotation commonly attributed to blah blah blah

So does anyone here know the first thing about libel law in France? If this were a US case, truth would be an absolute defense. If what he’s written about public officials is true, case closed, open and shut. UK law is more plaintiff-friendly, as I understand it. Anyone here interested in facts?

Speaking of reasonably interesting facts, if any of the commenters above attended a US graduate school, did they realize that it was almost certainly based on the German universities of the late 19th century, by way of Johns Hopkins?

Truth is also a defence in English law. The difference is that in the US the burden of proof falls on the plaintiff to show that the statement is false whereas in England the defendant must show that it is true. In English law, like American law, there is also a defence of fair comment but in the English courts this can be defeated by malice.

Let’s not forget the PM murdered in the streets who “had it coming” since he argued against immigration. The guy could have been more pilloried in the European media as some sort of hard right hate monger. Yet besides Pim Fortuyn’s immigration stance he was about as left as they come. Looks like ideas that the majority don’t agree are “correct” certainly can get you killed and the media will even say how your ideas were to blaim, in grand ol Europe, since the guy was about as conservative as Marx.

Jet. There’s no irony. I didn’t forget what the topic was: I was responding to your (and billings’) mindless rants about European socialism. I now regret this.

On this large topic the point stands: free speech does not equal the US First Amendment.

From the point of view of libel law, the First Amendment is important, but you seem unable to discuss this.

“Non-state actors” meant private corporations and individuals.

I’ll leave aside your latest gedankenexperiment about “KKK assholes on parade” and your last post which I frankly don’t understand.

Jet, Fortuyn wasn’t PM, and show me the European media reports that said he had it coming. Or just keep making stuff up, if you like. No pressure.

Engles,
I have visited France. And while it was mostly pleasant, I lost many days spending hours on the highway while my bus driver tried to talk the striking truck drivers into letting us pass. I spent roughly as much time sitting at some highway intersection in the middle of nowhere or taking some backroad that took twice as long as I did in the cities. I understand it was just poor timing on my part (I should have realized that the truck drivers were about to strike). If you have ever been to the US, you can understand my awe that the police let this happen.

Uncle Kvetch,
I don’t think you want to play this game, cause I think you just fired your last round, where I’m just getting started:

The French had been debating this issue for two decades…Few things declare religious identity so emphatically…many French people regard the headscarf as a symbol of oppression of women…

Nothing like a little persecution of religious minorities to make you feel smugly superior to those dirty Americans.

So. Jet. Christophe Grébert, French libel law and the pork-barrel righties. Qu’est-ce que vous pensez?

I have no interest in playing games with you, Jet. You said that censorship was “antithetical to American ideals.” I brought up the flag-burning amendment that is currently being pushed in Washington, because I find that it contradicts your assertion. I sincerely wondered what your response to it might be.

Turns out you don’t have one, beyond “Yeah, well the French are worse.”

Which really doesn’t surprise me in the least.

Want to guess how Fortuyn would have felt about a headscarf ban?

Excellent question, Ray. I can’t find a direct quote from PF on the subject, but the position of the party he founded is pretty clear:

Although a large majority of the Dutch parliament rejected the call by the right wing LPF party (established by the economist Pim Fortuyn, who was murdered in 2002) for a general French-style ban of the hijab, individual court cases dealing with instances of discrimination of Muslim women wearing the headscarf are frequent.

fifi: Opinion over here is only less diverse seen from far away, and your impression is skewed by the fact that, yes, on some stances endorsed by significant portions of US (e.g. … or Chinese, or Russian, or Japanese) public opinion there tends to be a more stable consensus here (death penalty, to name one thing).

jet: Your trucker strike experience has led you to conclude that the right of the French to protest against their elites is hampered?

FYI: The trial had to be adjourned and will take place in 2006. Reason: the city of Puteaux lawyer is busy defending another member of said elites in a major corruption trial. In the same département. And linked to the same poisonous cabal.

I love France, but an anectode I’ve read somewhere about the French government routinely suppressing information about their own nuclear powerstations accidents and about dangerous levels of radiation in the days and weeks after the Chernobyl disaster makes me deeply skeptical about freedom of the press there.

Jet, in what sense is the burning of Bush and Cheney posters ‘anti-US’ speech?

Or is Bush the personal embodiment of the US now? I seem to recall some European nations adopting that view in the 1930s with less than desirable consequences.

Burning Bush and Cheney posters is anti-Bush/Cheney speech, or anti-Republican speech, or anti-conservative speech — but what it certainly is *not* is anti-US speech.

Further, the view that burning the flag dishonours those who died for it is itself a political view. Taking a particular stance _vis a vis_ the status of a symbol as embodiment of some national or political ideal is not an _apolitical_ act.

You might call it ‘common sense’ but that doesn’t make it any less political. The view that the national flag has some kind of semi-sacred status as a national symbol and that attacking that flag is a deep insult to a nation is not a universal one.

I can understand that many Americans feel that way, and I can also understand partially _why_ they feel that way, but that doesn’t mean that flag-worship or flag-veneration is an apolitical position to take or one that’s widely held elsewhere.

And the same very much does _not_ go for Bush and Cheney. If directly insulting the President and Vice-President of a nation — by burning their effigies, for example — is somehow seen as an insult _to the nation_ rather than just to the individuals or political parties concerned then, frankly, you are already a very long way down the road to fascism.

And I am not using the word in some lazy sense here. Leader-veneration or the view that presidents and vice-presidents somehow stand for a nation or are embodiments of a nation’s character and that insults to them are instults to the nation precisely are features _of_ fascism.

It’s sad when Scrappleface has to put the screws to Durbin

Durbin: “I’m sorry if anything that I said caused any offense or pain to those who have such bitter memories of the Holocaust…”
First Draft: “I compared our personnel to the savages who ran death camps in Nazi Germany and Pol Pot’s Cambodia as well as Stalin’s gulags. I was wrong. My irrational statements tore open wounds and cheapened the legacy of millions of innocent victims of tyranny.”

Bill O’Reilly is a shock jock ratings whore.