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Eikre
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Post by Eikre »

Well, factually, pretty much every motherfucker in the Adeptus Materfuchus has a little skull with a robot in it hanging around, or a necklace made of femurs, or something. But I'm wondering, if GW wrote back and said, "got it, skins off dogs are not okay. Are skins off dudes okay? What about dudes that look like dogs? We can have some people fuck some dogs and make dog-people. Wait, is fucking dogs okay? What if the dogs are the ones fucking the people?" Etc.
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Post by Voss »

Orca wrote:I'm pretty sure GW does have a bunch of minis with implied severed human bits and human skin on them. Either PETA doesn't know, doesn't care or just sees them as some other crazy pressure groups problem.
No implied. Flayed Ones wander around in human skin. Dark eldar too. And yes, pretty much everyone has human skulls. Often several.

The really amusing thing is recent background has pretty firmly established the idea that there 'are no wolves on Fenris' (ie, the wolfskins the Space Wolves wear are human descendents bioengineered to be wolves).

Moot point anyway, since GW just recently brought back Magnus and wrecked Fenris the fuck up. No more wolves. Problem solved.
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Post by Koumei »

Well, PETA are a bunch of [EDITED] who aren't concerned with saving animal lives or reducing animal suffering, they're concerned with increasing human suffering. So obviously they don't give a fuck about Flayed Ones literally wearing human skin, everyone having human heads as trophies for their backbacks and all that, they just want to kick up a fuss about the Space Wolves.

Meanwhile, people who are busy worrying about actual animal issues in the real world such as live baiting for greyhounds, conservation of natural habitats, housing homeless dogs and similar: basically every other animal welfare group that is not PETA.

But hey, maybe they can get someone else to stand naked in a cage to convert people to veganism.
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Post by OgreBattle »

Is this proof that gee dubs and forty kay is mainstream and relevant to the anglosphere if PETA talks about them

Or is PETA just abaddon-black-crusade random crazy
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Post by Koumei »

GeeDub is apparently "kinda sorta" mainstream in the UK, in that everyone there basically knows what it is, even if they never go there and laugh at the people who play it. I want them to destroy each other over this, that would be a Just As Planned tier result.
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Post by Blade »

OgreBattle wrote:What are the main issues important to French voters, in guessing immigration and maybe the Russian invasion?
Unemployment is regularly cited as the main concern.

After the recent terrorist attacks, security became a major concern as well, and of course many people played on that fear to push their racist agenda and pretend that a few thousands migrants is an invasion and that we have a problem with "Laicité" (the French secularism, that's kind of a big deal here and that was originally meant so that State cannot influence religion, and that religion (mostly Catholicism when the law was created) cannot influence the State). I don't know if they've been able to convince many people, but they were able to give these a central place in the political debates.

People here don't really think about the possibility of a Russian invasion nor care much about Russia. Some politicians (and people) see Putin as a great guy who has the balls to do whatever is needed (especially in Syria), others say that we've got to be wary of him, but nobody seems to consider him as a major threat.
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phlapjackage
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Post by phlapjackage »

How do Germans (and other non-USians, I guess) feel about free speech?

https://www.popehat.com/2017/02/10/erdo ... ee-speech/
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Post by Blade »

Not German but French, and I feel that "it's complicated".

The French take (at least according to the law) on the free speech is that it's ok as long as you're not inciting to hatred (like saying "we should kill all the [...]"). Though you need to get pretty far to actually get censored, and most of the time by the time you are everbody has already seen/heard your message.
There's also the libel limit, but it's mostly used when there are fake allegations that are put forward as true, I doubt a French court would have censored the poem.

Personally, I think that a good anti-hate speech is a better way to fight hate speech than censorship and that it's easier to deliver that anti-hate speech when the hate-speech if manifest. Censorship mostly leads to people hiding their hate-speech just enough not to get censored.

I guess that it's pretty good to have a way to say "we, as a Nation, won't stand for such speech", but in practice I don't feel that the censorship is really working as expected.
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phlapjackage
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Post by phlapjackage »

Thanks for your answer Blade!

Would you say the French enjoy more or less "free speech" than ze Germans?
Koumei: and if I wanted that, I'd take some mescaline and run into the park after watching a documentary about wasps.
PhoneLobster: DM : Mr Monkey doesn't like it. Eldritch : Mr Monkey can do what he is god damn told.
MGuy: The point is to normalize 'my' point of view. How the fuck do you think civil rights occurred? You think things got this way because people sat down and fucking waited for public opinion to change?
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Post by Stahlseele »

Can you go to Jail for lifting your right arm in a certain way in france?
Can you go to Jail for denying the Holocaust in france?
If not, then yes, the french enjoy more free speech than ze germans.
Wether or not that is a good thing given that one example, is up for discussion.
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Post by Blade »

Jean-Marie Le Pen (former leader of the FN and father of Marine Le Pen) has been found guilty of negationism at least twice, each time he just had a fine (30 000 euros for the last time).

We also have someone who regularly tweets outspoken racist views (and I mean truly "black people are naturally inferior") and he got only a fine of about 15 000 euros.

France doesn't have the same ban on nazi stuff as Germany has (movies and video games can use nazi imagery). However there are clearly some minorities that are better protected than others. When a celebrity says something hateful against the Jewish community, the backlash will be far worse than if he said the same thing against the Roma or the Syrian migrants.
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Post by SlyJohnny »

I'm kind of done with the idea that you don't have "free speech" if you aren't legally allowed to have a town hall meeting debating whether or not black people have a moral right to exist, and if not, whether they should be exterminated.
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Post by Kaelik »

Yeah, hearing german's complain (or a bunch of neo-nazis in the US complain on behalf of the german people) that there is one incorrect statement which they legally aren't allowed to make "our government didn't kill 6 million jews, and several million poles and gypsies and gays as part of an attempt to exterminate a race of people" is just super who gives a fuck. You can be sued for a bunch of incorrect statements under libel and slander, it just has to be proved:

1) that it's incorrect.
2) that you said it to cause harm to another person.
3) that it caused that harm.

The anti-holocaust denial law is literally just the nation prejudging all cases and finding that holocaust denial that violates the law always meets all three qualifications. AND IT FUCKING DOES. So you are literally complaining about not being able to get away with breaking the law, as opposed to actually being subject to penalties for your "free speech."
Blade wrote:France doesn't have the same ban on nazi stuff as Germany has (movies and video games can use nazi imagery). However there are clearly some minorities that are better protected than others. When a celebrity says something hateful against the Jewish community, the backlash will be far worse than if he said the same thing against the Roma or the Syrian migrants.
Backlash that isn't legal has fucking nothing to do with freedom of speech.
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The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.

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Post by Blade »

Kaelik wrote:Backlash that isn't legal has fucking nothing to do with freedom of speech.
That's like saying that the voter suppression and other election rigging in the US have nothing to do with the right to vote because it's all legal.

If your society silences minorities, it robs them of the freedom of speech, no matter if it's by censoring them directly or just by having a system where you need to be a rich white guy to write in a newspaper.
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Kaelik
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Post by Kaelik »

Blade wrote:
Kaelik wrote:Backlash that isn't legal has fucking nothing to do with freedom of speech.
That's like saying that the voter suppression and other election rigging in the US have nothing to do with the right to vote because it's all legal.

If your society silences minorities, it robs them of the freedom of speech, no matter if it's by censoring them directly or just by having a system where you need to be a rich white guy to write in a newspaper.
No you idiot. If the law suppresses voters, such as by requiring IDs, then that is of course, related to the right to vote. If a guy shows up at a polling place with a gun and scares people away from voting, that is against the law, and also has to do with the right to vote. If someone says "I'll fire you if you don't show up to work on Tuesday (the day that you are supposed to vote)" then that has to do with the right to vote, but isn't illegal. (and whether or not it should be, Tuesday should be a holiday, and also there should be copious access to early and by mail voting.) If on the other hand, someone says "you probably shouldn't fucking vote, because both candidates suck" that is in fact, not having to do with your right to vote at all. Or if someone says "I'm not going to fucking buy products from Microsoft because I think that Bill Gates is a shitty Hillary voter" that's nothing to do with the right to vote.

Likewise, if someone says "Man, aren't all those jews fucking terrible, I hate them" and then other people meanly make fun of him and don't give him their money and don't go watch his movies, that's not fucking interfering with free speech, and your brave bold call for "no one should be able to criticize me for being a racist shitstain" is not in fact, you arguing for free speech, it is you arguing that other people shouldn't be allowed to say mean things about you (and how are you going to enforce that again? Death Threats or the Government?)
Last edited by Kaelik on Mon Feb 13, 2017 4:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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Post by Blade »

But when someone who says "Man, aren't all those jews fucking terrible, I hate them" gets sued immediately by an organization, while someone who says "Man, aren't all those romas fucking terrible, I hate them" gets no legal repercussion because the system is made so that Roma can't get legal support, then you have a problem.

It's not directly a freedom of speech problem, but it is related to it.
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Post by Kaelik »

No, it is not even remotely related to a free speech problem at all. It is literally the exact opposite of a free speech problem.
DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?
The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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Post by Nachtigallerator »

phlapjackage wrote:How do Germans (and other non-USians, I guess) feel about free speech?

https://www.popehat.com/2017/02/10/erdo ... ee-speech/
Free speech is protected by the german basic law. So is art and the press.

However, german jurisprudence tends to work along the lines that free speech does not extend to the point where it infringes on the dignity of another person. So if you state your opinion of someone (or a group of people) in a way that was intended as attack on their dignity, that is a potentially punishable offense. The insult does not have to be untrue to constitute an insult as long as the extend of what you do goes beyond a reasonable way of stating the facts - so if you shout "HANS, THE LYING BASTARD, CHEATED ON HIS WIFE" in the marketplace, that can constitute an insult even if it happens to be true - the court has to gauge whether your intentention was to injure that person with your statement of opinion, even if it was based around true facts. If you shout "ALL COPS ARE BASTARDS" while a group of cops is detaining you, that can be a punishable insult, too, because you might have intended to insult the cops who were listening to you shout. Insult (Beleidigung) generally applies if you express an opinion as opposed to making a statement of supposed facts. If you claim to make a statement of facts that is found unproveable or demonstrably untrue, that's defamation (üble Nachrede) or libel (Verleumdung), respectively.

If german comedian Jan Böhmermann insults Recep Erdogan and he sues (which he did) he is using a special paragraph that applies specifically to insulting foreign heads of state - it allows a significantly higher jail term than the ordinary one. It can only be used if the german government gives permission to prosecute, so if Merkel didn't want Erdogan's cooperation for her inhuman refugee deal, the case probably would not have happened the way it did. It did happen, and parts of Böhmermanns satirical poem were forbidden by the last court it was debated in. The decision is not legally binding yet, so I won't bother to look for the court's argument - Böhmermann could still take the case to the Federal Constitutional Court because his basic rights are at stake here.


So in german law, you're entitled to stating your own opinion only insofar as it is not meant to injure the dignity of someone else. In practice, that usually doesn't work out as rigidly as it sounds, because the kind of people who get insulted a lot (i.e. celebrities and officials in ther public identity) are legally expected to have a thicker skin than private individuals about this kind of thing. Notably, a Berlin court ruled that while it was not okay to publish satire claiming that Kai Diekmann, notorious yellow press sleazebag, tried to have his dick enlarged with dead body parts (unsuccessfully), he cannot sue for damages against the writer - because Diekmann makes his money by purporting that kind of injurious rumor about other people, he's expected to be able to take that kind of thing in stride. Which might be dubious legal reasoning, but I think it's awesome.


That is for attacks on the personal level. If you make statements against an ethnically or religiously defined groups that attack their human dignity, or demand that people round them up for deportation, that is punishable as "Volksverhetzung", for which there seems to be no proper english word - the official translation uses "incitement to hatred". That is commonly the law applied against nazis who demand that jews be discriminated against right now. The statements have to be made in a manner that can disturb the public peace, so you can jolly well say that kind of thing privately. This is often used against holocaust denialists. The bar for persecution seems to be quite high in practice - speakers at PEGIDA have been spouting all kind of racist nonsense absolving brown people of their dignity, and only one of them has been sentenced so far - and then only to a fine.

It's also forbidden to use certain symbols of nazism except for science, art, or teaching. So it's no problem to publish an annotated edition of Mein Kampf for educational or research purposes, but you're not allowed to march under the Reichskriegsflagge with your nazi buddies.
Last edited by Nachtigallerator on Mon Feb 13, 2017 7:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by hyzmarca »

If you can injure someone's dignity, then they never had any in the first place.

Dignity is a personal thing. If you have it, then you have it, and nothing anyone else says or does can change that. Only you can. Likewise, if you don't have it, no one else can give it to you.
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Post by Voss »

hyzmarca wrote:If you can injure someone's dignity, then they never had any in the first place.

Dignity is a personal thing. If you have it, then you have it, and nothing anyone else says or does can change that. Only you can. Likewise, if you don't have it, no one else can give it to you.
That's... cute. In a childlike naivete and ignorance of reality sort of way. Except you're presumably an adult, so it's simply offensively ignorant.

Other people can in fact degrade and break someone to the point that no one and no society would consider them to have dignity. Or, in fact, help build someone back up.
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Post by Nachtigallerator »

"Dignity" has multiple meanings, and maybe some of it got lost in my translation. In the sense that it is used here, it can also translate to "reputation in the public eye". And that can definitely be injured by slander and misleading reporting, even if someone has the kind of nebulous dignity of character that some people like to talk about. It should be noted that many Insult claims in Germany are dismissed by the prosecution because they deny a public interest in pursuing them. Those that are prosecuted by the judicary often deal with people who performed some kind of public office while being insulted (i.e. police) or where there was some actual public reception of the insult, such as in a published article.

With the specific paragraph used in the case against Böhmermann, the prosecution is actually bound by the decision of the federal government whether or not to pursue the case - they can not make a legal judgement whether or not Erdogan actually has a case or not, they have to take the government's orders. So it wasn't the legal system that sacrificed german civil liberties to placate Erdogan, it was Angela Merkel. If this had been an ordinary situation without a foreign head of state involved, the prosecution might very well have argued that there was either no public interest, or no intent to insult Erdogan as a person and he would've had to pursue a lengthy civil case instead. Also note that Erdogan is one of maybe three heads of states to actually use that paragraph - the other being the pope and Chile in 1975. It's about as well-known as the one penalizing "Bringing about an explosion through nuclear energy" with up to five years in prison. It would be funny if it wasn't so tragic.

I'd agree that it should be next to impossible to insult Erdogan, especially if it happened during a satirical show on public broadcasting and the whole thing was cloaked in layers of irony - since you probably didn't watch the original, Böhmermann essentially shot off a giant cascade of vulgar and vaguely racist profanities at Erdogan "to give an example of what you wouldn't legally be allowed to say about a despot like him". By german law, what matters is the intent to personally injure - so if it was not actually directed at Erdogan personally, but meant to poke fun at the idea that even a despot was protected from petty insults, there is no crime.

Another peculiarity in german press law is that you can take any statement to the public to any court in whose jurisdiction it could have been noticed by said public - so if it's been in the local gazette, you can only sue in the local court. If it's been on national TV or on the internet, you can sue in courts all over the country. And the Landgericht Hamburg is known to be pretty uptight in what constitutes an insult to someones dignity, so a lot of high-profile cases end up there. As I said, Böhmermann still has options to repeal, and he has actually announced that he will. Germany does not have specialized appeals courts, so it'll go the Oberlandesgericht Hamburg next. If he's not satisfied with their ruling, it'll go before the Federal Constitutional Court, which is very likely to be more in favor of artistic freedom. It's pretty likely that Merkel expects this, because she has a habit of delegating the decisions that could hurt her standing with conservative voters (or foreign leaders) to the constitutional judges.
Last edited by Nachtigallerator on Mon Feb 13, 2017 10:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Stahlseele »

Due to not being entirely awake yet, for a second there i expected something something MLP FIM . .
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Peculiar properties of spacetime ensure that the perception of the magnitude of Soon is fluid and dependent, not on an individual's time-reference, but on spatial and cultural location. A marketer generally perceives Soon as a finite, known, yet unspeakable time-interval; to a fan, the interval appears greater, and may in fact approach the infinite, becoming Never. Once the interval has passed, however, a certain time-lensing effect seems to occur, and the time-interval becomes vanishingly small. We therefore see the strange result that the same fragment of spacetime may be observed, in quick succession, as Soon, Never, and All Too Quickly.
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Post by Prak »

Orca wrote:On a totally different matter, Games Workshop recently got a letter from PETA asking them to stop depicting fur on their models, this apparently being unacceptable in 2017.

http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2017/01/ ... mdark.html
PETA guy 1: Hey, it's been a really long time since the public gave a shit about us.
PETA guy 2: Shit, you're right, what can we do?
PETA ex-gamer: Oh! This mini game you've never heard of but is the most well known minis game in the hobby has a lot of models with sculpted wolf pets! How about we demand they stop that?
PETA guy 1: I mean... it is a lot less likely that we'll get our teeth kicked in than when we throw red paint at people wearing leather...
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