A Stitch in Haste

Um, "New Europe"?

A court Tuesday convicted the publisher of a satirical magazine of insulting Polish-born Pope John Paul II and fined him $6,500.

Jerzy Urban, founder and publisher of the weekly magazine "NIE" -- Polish for "no" -- illegally insulted the pope when he printed an article making fun of John Paul's age and frailty before a visit to Poland in 2002, the court ruled.

He was found guilty of violating a law that bans publicly insulting foreign heads of state. The court noted that the pontiff heads the Vatican, formally an independent state.

Urban, 71, earned a reputation for his sarcasm and acid tongue in the early 1980s when he served as the spokesman for the government of Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, which imposed martial law in an attempt to crush the Solidarity freedom movement. After the fall of communism, he became a successful and wealthy businessman.

Urban had professed his innocence in the case, saying he only exercised the right to free expression. Prosecutors had asked for the fine and a 10-month suspended prison term.

Prosecutor Maciej Kujawski brought the defamation charges in September 2003, after Catholics and other organizations accused Urban of offending the much-admired Catholic leader.

Now of course an "insult" or a satirical parody of anyone, let alone a public figure, is never "defamation" by Anglo-American standards. Nevertheless, I always get a chuckle when I hear people's surprise that the First Amendment generally and freedom of speech particularly are -- surprise! -- uniquely American concepts that are almost totally unknown in other cultures.

Baby steps, New Europe, baby steps.

Oh, and by the way:

POPE JOHN PAUL II
WEARS FARTY PANTS!

Related Post:
Was the First Amendment Really "First"?

The Advertising Standards Authority is here to protect the interest of consumers. It’s our role to make sure all advertising, wherever it appears, is both honest and decent.
--ASA Website

Still have a hard time believing that there is no First Amendment in Europe?

Drinks companies have been ordered to use uglier men in their advertising campaigns.

The Advertising Standards Authority believes "balding" and "paunchy" men would be less likely to encourage women to drink to achieve social success.

The new advertising code stresses that links must not be made between alcohol and seduction.

A campaign for popular sparkling drink Lambrini has become the first to fall foul of the new rules.

The Authority objected to a poster which showed three women "hooking" a slim, young man in a parody of a fairground game.

The industry regulator instructed the firm: "We would advise that the man in the picture should be unattractive — ie overweight, middle-aged, balding etc."

Of course, here in the U.S. commercial speech doesn't receive full First Amendment protection either, but it does receive some protection — see Central Hudson Gas & Electric v. Public Service Commission, 447 U.S. 557 (1980); regarding alcohol advertising see 44 Liquormart v. Rhode Island, 517 US 484 (1996) (broad power to regulate alcohol does not include plenary power to censor alcohol advertising).

Our boundaries on First Amendment protection of commercial speech try to limit direct, objective and proximate harms like fraudulent advertising, advertising to children, and blanket bans on addictive substances such as cigarettes and alcohol in some contexts (e.g., sporting events). But we have not (yet) sunk to the level where ads are censored because some hack bureaucrat hypothesizes some cute, flimsy and unproven theory of causation that, even if somehow true, would be completely irrelevant anyway.

And keep in mind that we are not talking about Iran, or Pakistan or Singapore. This is the U.K. The Europeans may be getting some things right (e.g., gay marriage), but they don't beat us in everything regarding basic civil liberties.

More thoughts at Hit & Run, Nanny Knows Best.

Yet another reminder that there is no First Amendment in Europe:

British historian David Irving was arrested last week in southern Austria on a warrant accusing him of denying the Holocaust, the Interior Ministry said Thursday.
...
Irving was detained on a warrant issued in 1989 under Austrian laws that make Holocaust denial a crime, [an Interior Ministry spokesman] said.
...
If formally charged, tried and convicted on the charge, Irving could face up to 20 years in prison...

As despicable as Holocaust deniers are, isn't it better to subject their theories to objective repudiation — and subsequently to ridicule — than to teach post-Holocaust generations that some ideas are taboo?

The best weapon against a lie is not the law, but the truth.

POST SCRIPT #1: Meanwhile, in Saudi Arabia saying nice things about Jews will earn you 750 lashes.

POST SCRIPT #2: Here's the hat trick.

Sweden's Parliament has voted to add sexual orientation to the list of criminalized hate speech categories:

Since it involves changes to the constitution, the legislation, which is scheduled to take effect next year, must pass another parliamentary vote after national elections in September.

The Scandinavian nation of some 9 million people has liberal freedom of expression laws, but speech that threatens or condemns a group of people because of their race, skin color, national or ethnic origin, or religious faith is banned.
...
Violations are punishable by up to two years in prison.

Of course, I'd prefer that Sweden go in the opposite direction and add a "First Amendment" equivalent protecting hate speech. Go figure.

Protect civil liberties, in all its forms, and gays will still be able to find ways to protect themselves from mean words (which aren't really the problem anyway, in Sweden or anywhere else).

ITALY:

The good news: Declaring "Sporche negre — cosa ci fanno queste negre qua?" ("Dirty negroes — what are these negroes doing here?") does not necessarily constitute the crime of "racism" in Italy.

The bad news: There is even such a thing as the crime of "racism" in Italy.

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BRITAIN:

A schoolgirl has been told that she cannot wear a crucifix necklace to school because it might offend non-Christians.

Sikh students, meanwhile, are allowed to wear ceremonial kirpan daggers to that very same school.

The rationalization of the different policies? The Sikh religion requires that the dagger be worn; Christianity does not require the wearing of a crucifix necklace. (See also here — Sikh students in Quebec and Ontario are also allowed to wear kirpans to school.)

I wonder how each student would fare trying to enter a New York City public school (or a New York City subway).

Some speed blogging:

ITEM: Lance Armstrong indicted (not sued, but indicted) for criminal (not civil, but criminal) libel in Italy against a fellow Tour de France competitor. Having excessively anti-defendant tort laws for defamation in Europe is bad enough, but to also have criminal laws against defamation is patently absurd and unacceptably anti-liberty. (More thoughts at Division of Labour.)

ITEM: Two drunken fools outside a concentration camp museum in Germany were arrested for giving a "Hitler salute" and singing a pro-Aryan song as tourists arrived in a bus. I'm sympathetic to the claim that "Swastikas in Germany" are sui generis, but there ought to be some minimum threshold before criminal penalties attach. And if not, then the next question is how long should Germany's zero tolerance policy for all things Nazi last? We're already at 60 years. Would 75 years be enough? One hundred? Forever?

Two more tales of thought suppression from Europe (and a Europe wannabe):

ITEM: File this under "calls for outrage" --

An Austrian man who used an oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler for his cell phone voice mail has been sentenced to two months in prison.

Police accidentally came across the message on the 20-year-old's phone in 2004 when they called to question him about a burglary.

Prosecutors say he downloaded the message from the Internet. It includes the repeating of the phrase "Sieg Heil!"

The defendant says that the download was a "spontaneous act" and that he did not fully embrace the meaning of the oath.

He was sentenced to a year in prison for theft and fencing stolen goods, but the court decided to tack on two extra months for using the oath.

There is a law in Austria that makes Nazi propaganda a crime.

MY TAKE: So a ringtone is "Nazi propaganda"? I wonder whether "The Producers" would be banned in Austria.

I still say that, eventually if not now, there should be a sunset clause for zero-tolerance of all-things-Nazi in Germany and Austria. Then again, I think the First Amendment is a neat idea that Europe might want to replicate. Go figure.

(Via Fark.)

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ITEM: Speaking of the Holocaust, some have suggested that it has resulted in a "crowding out effect" in that people now pay less attention to the other infamous genocides of history. At the top of many people's lists is the Armenian Massacre of 1915-1923 in the Ottoman Empire (i.e., present-day Turkey). The entire ethnic Armenian population was either murdered or dispossessed and evicted — roughly one million people.

Turkey doesn't like to be reminded of that:

A writer has been fined 3,000 lira (£1,300) under a much-criticised law against insulting Turkish identity.

Zulkuf Kisanak was first given five months in jail, but an Istanbul court then reduced the sentence to a fine.
...
He is among more than 60 writers and publishers, including novelist Orhan Pamuk, to face charges under the law.

Mr Pamuk is on trial for telling a newspaper: "One million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds were killed in these lands and nobody but me dares talk about it."
...
The European Union, which has agreed to start formal membership talks with Ankara, has described the Pamuk case as a litmus test of Turkey's eligibility to join.

MY TAKE: This is of course far more obnoxious than the "all things Nazi" ban in Germany and Austria — those bans forbid embracing past atrocities rather than the exposing them. Still, there's a wide middle ground between these two extremes, which invites far too much suppression of free speech. than the exposure of past atrocities. (UPDATE: Turkey is now reportedly considering repealing the law in question.)

(Cross-posted previously at Overlawyered.)

One of the points that I often emphasize is that there simply is no First Amendment in Europe.

Just ask Madonna:

Prosecutors plan to keep an eye on Madonna's weekend concert in Duesseldorf to see if the pop diva repeats the mock crucifixion scene that has drawn fire from religious leaders.

Johannes Mocken, a spokesman for prosecutors in Duesseldorf, said Tuesday that a repeat of that scene during Sunday's concert could be construed as insulting religious beliefs.
...
Mocken said authorities would rely on media reports rather than sending observers to the concert and that the show might be covered by laws protecting artistic freedoms.

Read that again: "might be covered." So not only is there no blanket freedom of expression, but what partial protections do exist are so vague that even the prosecutors don't know how they apply to whom under what circumstances.

Of course, we have our own "freedom of artistic expression" problems here in the U.S., most of which can be summed up in three letters: FCC. And there is still a small smattering of Robert Bork acolytes who preposterously insist that the First Amendment doesn't apply to art.

A successful artist such as Madonna already needs enough lawyers to put on a mega-concert. She shouldn't need a criminal defense counsel too.

UPDATE: German prosecutors took no action.

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And if you think Europe is bad, then try Africa:

A Zimbabwean man is in police custody after allegedly making insulting remarks about President Robert Mugabe.

Tichaona Muchabaiwa was arrested at the weekend at a police roadblock, the official Herald newspaper reports.
...
He is to be charged under a law that makes it illegal to "undermine the authority of or insult the president," a police spokesman said.

I guess there are no Bush-style "free speech zones" in Zimbabwe. Go figure.

There is no First Amendment, or common sense, in Britain:

It happened at the end of September, during a festival of Jewish celebration in Trafalgar Square. The four were distributing flyers advertising a party due to take place in Hackney this month. The party was called "The protocols of the elders of Hackney" a pun on that old fraudulent anti-Semitic document, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Even though their leaflet was clearly satirical, the four pranksters were arrested on suspicion of spreading anti-Semitic material. Following complaints from a handful of members of the public, the police arrested and detained the four leafleters under section 19 of the Public Order Act, which covers suspicion of distributing racially inflammatory material with intent to incite racial hatred.

Criminal Investigation Department (CID) officers confiscated the "inflammable leaflets," as Jewdas now refers to them. The fact that the leaflet was produced by Jewish members of Jewdas — the self-appointed "radical voice for the alternative Jewish Diaspora" that wants to "celebrate being Jewish" — seemed to make not a blind bit of difference to those who complained of anti-Semitism or to the police who acted on those complaints.

This wasn't just what we Yanks would call a First Amendment violation; it was a case of prior restraint — censorship, the Great Line We Simply Do Not Ever Cross. And all over a party and a parody, an attempt to make people smile and laugh and forget the hate-based sorrows of the world for a while.

So much for that idea.

Then again, we're poised to suspend the Great Writ, in flagrant violation of our own Constitution. So who are we to judge?

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Meanwhile, this sort of anti-Semitism seems perfectly okay in Britain:

PC Alexander Omar Basha, who is attached to the force's Diplomatic Protection Group, objected to being posted to protect Israel's embassy in central London from possible terrorist attack because he disagreed with the country's bombing of Lebanon.
...
A Met spokesman earlier said allowances were occasionally granted to officers who objected to duties on moral grounds.
...
The case has provoked unease from those who worry that officers may be able to start picking and choosing their duties.

If you can't do the job, then quit. "Moral grounds" be damned. Even the U.S.' First Amendment does not recognize a free-speech "right not to do your job. (Via Samizdata.)

As murky as American "student speech" jurisprudence is (and it just got a lot worse), it's still better than Europe's:

A teenager has lost her High Court challenge to be allowed to wear a Christian "purity ring" to school.
...
[L]awyers for the school successfully argued that the purity ring was not an essential part of the Christian religion and contravened the school's uniform policy.

Note: "the" Christian religion. As if there's only one.

More:

Her lawyer had argued that the school, which allows Muslim and Sikh students to wear headscarves and religious bracelets, was violating Lydia's right to "freedom of thought, conscience and religion" under Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Indeed, some Western nations even allow Sikh children to bring ceremonial daggers to school. But again, educrats know "the" Sikh religion as well as "the" Christian religion, so in their minds an inconsistent policy accommodating one but not the other is perfectly hunky-dory.

The girl's family is considering an appeal, although it's unclear whether that would be to the House of Lords or to the European Union's judicial system.

More thoughts at Religion Clause.

Wow. Just wow:

Italian bloggers may be required to register with a national database, unless an ambiguously-worded new law is amended before it comes into force.

Widespread outrage among bloggers and IT-savvy journalists has reached the mainstream press, and the government now appears to be keen to revise a draft law which has led politician Francesco Caruso to remark: "This is Italy, not Burma."
...
According to many legal experts, the murky text of the law can be construed to include non-professional, not-for-profit blogs and websites among "editorial products", giving them the same duties and liabilities as magazines and newspapers.

This would require even the lowliest Italian blogger or MySpace account holder to go through the hassle of filing personal details with the national registry of "communication operators" currently reserved for professionals of the publishing sector.

Besides its Big Brother-esque implications, this registration would also expose bloggers to penalties and jail terms if a blog post, or even a reader's comment, were considered libelous.

In a civilized nation, in a civilized century?

The politicians and bureaucrats responsible for this proposed human rights violation are of course backpedaling and insisting that, no no no, they of course did not intend to silence bloggers and that the rules (you can't just have a law, you need "rules" interpreting the law) would be developed later (by "enlightened" bureaucrats, obviously).

Fortunately we don't legislate that way here in the United States. Do we?

The proposed law is currently before the Italian parliament, where it is expected to die a quick and ignoble death.

(Indirectly via Beppe Grillo by way of Slashdot.)

January may be Canada Month at Sunday CuteTuber™, but every day is Individual Rights Day at the rest of this blog:



Back story here; see also here. The rest of the "interrogation" here.

(Via Fusionist Libertarian.)

Technorati Tag: Ezra Lavant.