Tag: overcriminalization

Olympian Voula Papachristou banned for a joke ‘very bitter and upset’. Dictatorship of political correctness destroys lives and freedom.

 

Greece Bans Voula Papachristou from 2012 Olympics over African Joke

Voula Papachristou was kicked off Greece’s Olympic team on Wednesday for making a racist, derogatory comment on her Twitter account. She wrote: "With so many Africans in Greece, the West Nile mosquitoes will be getting home food!!!"

Voula-Papachristou-008A harmless joke. Offense to Africans is in the eye of the beholder.

What was the joke? "With so many Africans in Greece, the West Nile mosquitoes will be getting home food!!!" she tweeted. Athletic officialdom was not amused.

What was racist about the comment, given that Papachristou, apparently a strong Greek patriot, did not express any negative opinions about Africans, is a mystery … at least to normal people. She did not traffic in what the left believes are standard racist tropes. She did not say that Africans are more violent or disposed to crime than Greeks. Nor did she claim they are less intelligent than the descendants of Homer, Plato and Aristotle. She told an off-color joke, as it were.

She is also guilty of supporting the Golden Dawn party, which, while admittedly sounding a little extreme, opposes immigration; in other words, they would keep Greece for the Greeks. Perhaps that, as Patrick Cleburne wrote, is the real crime. Vdare

What we at Human-Stupidity say is much more offensive. Prepare for Human-Stupidity being raided and shut down! Freedom of expression has long been abolished by speech codes and political correctness rules.

Voula Papachristou’s other sin is promoting views of a party that is in Greek parliament.  If a party is not outlawed, promoting it should not lead to expulsion from the Olympics! Political correctness destroys our democratic liberties and ideals.

Papachristou’s Twitter account ((at)papaxristoutj) contained several retweets and links to sites and YouTube videos promoting the views of Golden Dawn, a formerly marginal extreme right party that entered the Greek Parliament in two recent elections – in May and June – by polling almost 7 percent of the vote. She has since erased those links and retweets from her account. 2

Carlos-SmithPolitical correctness

Political correctness starts lightly and is ever expanding overcriminalization. Hate speech laws were intended to punish incendiary speech promoting violence and genocide. It was illegal to say "Kill Africans". Then it extended to using derogatory terms like the N -word ("nigger"). If someone uses the N-word, it is understood that the offended have the right to escalate violently "retaliate". I do hope that I don’t get arrested, or attacked by vigilantes, for typing this word once. Now we got as far as to get punished for privately making a joke? 

But it was her attempt at a joke Sunday that got the most attention. Commenting on the widely reported appearance of Nile-virus-carrying mosquitoes in Athens, Papachristou wrote: "With so many Africans in Greece, the West Nile mosquitoes will be getting home food!!!". Her tweet prompted thousands of negative comments that snowballed Wednesday. 2

Vdare assails the fuzziness of hate crime definitions:

One cannot know what is racist and what isn’t. The word has no precise definition. One day, it means burning crosses and terrorizing blacks. The next, it means calling President Obama a socialist. Or skinny. Or opposing his health-care plan. Yet because those who level charge control what it means, or doesn’t mean, and can use it any way they wish, one is defenseless against it. It cannot be falsified. The very charge imposes the conviction of guilt. Vdare

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Daughter awarded US$ 110,000 for father’s emotional neglect- Brazilian Supreme Court

The Brazilian Supreme court awarded US$ 110,000 of moral damages to a daughter who felt emotionally abandoned and felt treated as second class daughter by her father. The court dismissed the father’s defense that this emotional abandonment was caused by the mother’s aggressive behavior. Also the fact that paternity of the now adult daughter was only officially established recently.

Such legal liability is now in the process of being incorporated into the ECA statute of adolescent and children’s rights.

The intent of giving emotional support is noble. Human-Stupidity deplores the overcriminalization and total regulamentation of all aspects of human behavior under the threat of heavy civil liabilities.

Due to the importance of such decisions to Libertarians,  the men’s rights (and feminist) movement, we translated two newspaper articles in their entirety.

Translation: Superior Tribunal in Brazil orders father to pay compensation for emotional abandonment 
(STJ condena pai a indenizar filha por abandono afetivo)brazilian-supreme-court

SAO PAULO – The Third Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice (STJ) ordered a father to pay R $ 200 thousand [US$ 110 000] to his daughter for "emotional distance". The decision is unprecedented. In 2005, the Fourth Chamber of the Supreme Court had rejected moral damages for emotional distance.

The case judged originates from São Paulo. The author of the case obtained judicial recognition of paternity and filed suit against the father because he had suffered material and emotional neglect during childhood and adolescence. The trial judge dismissed the petition and attributed the father’s distance to "aggressive behavior" of her mother towards the father. The woman appealed to the appeals court and said the father was "wealthy and prosperous." The Court of São Paulo (TJSP) reversed the judgment and set the compensation for R$ 415,000.

On appeal to the Supreme Court, the father argued that there was no abandonment, and even if he had done so, there would be illegal to be financially indemnified and the only possible punishment for failing with such obligations fathers would be the loss of family power.

Minister Nancy Andrighi , the of the court’s third chamber, however, understood that it is possible to demand compensation for moral damage caused by emotional abandonment by parents. "Love is optional, care is duty," she said in the sentence. For her, there is no reason to treat the damage to family relationships differently from other civil damages.

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Acta in the UK: 10 years in jail for a download. Copyright running amok.

The movie industry, record industry, and yes, the porn industry have some legitimate concern about  illegal unpaid downloading of their intellectual property. Unfortunately, they try to stem the tide by draconian punishment for minor crimes like downloading. Dangerously, industry interests coax politicians to enact overcriminalization laws that seriously hamper internet freedom and mete out harsh prison sentences, like SOPA in the US and ACTA in Europe.

See this YouTube movie

 

Human-Stupidity Analysis: historical precedents and alternative solutions

Interestingly, we had similar problems when Gutenberg invented printing, when the shellac record was invented, with advent of the copying machine, the tape recorder etc.

When we download something we really like, we would love to pay for it. Unfortunately we don’t know how. An easy mechanism for voluntary pay should be created. Furthermore, many countries introduced a tax on blank DVD, CD, copying machines, DVD recording machines that was to be used exclusively to pay off copyright owners. As a solution to the copyright dilemma, a similar monthly tax has been proposed on computer equipment. Harsh but much better then criminalization of an entire population and internet surveillance.

Human-Stupidity, tongue in cheek, wonders if these taxes are evenly passed on the the porn industry, which disproportionately suffers from illegal copying.

We also want to remember that it is morally unjust and illicit money grabbing, when copyright owners charge the SAME prices for downloads (that cost almost nothing) then for physical CD and shellac disks that entail huge production, transport, distribution and storage cost. This is the same as if we were charged the same price for books as they cost when someone had to copy them in hand-writing, before the advent of printing. Prices ought to drop considerably due to technical progress.

Overcriminalization: everyone violates trivial laws! Hence: “Don’t Talk to Cops! Refuse Search!”

1) “I have nothing to say, officer”.  2) I don’t consent to searches”.

are the most important sentences to deal with police. Listen to a law school professor, a policeman, a human rights organisation. They all say the same

Police: a dangerous threat to be avoided? Why can’t we cooperate with police?

You always have the right to refuse police searches (“Officer, I don’t consent to any searches”) and refuse to answer questions without a lawyer present. (“I have nothing to say. I want to see a lawyer.”) […]

No Warrant, No Search!
The Supreme Court has ruled that the home is entitled to maximum search protection. Even if they have probable cause to believe something illegal is going on inside your home, the 4th Amendment requires police to get a signed search warrant from a judge to legally enter and search. flexyourrights.org/faq

This advice makes us cringe: as honest, law abiding citizens, we want to cooperate with law enforcement, so they can track down violent dangerous criminals and terrorists. But collaboration with police endangers our own safety and gets us into jail?

A law abiding honest citizen has to avoid talking to police? Must refrain from helping police work? The good citizen has to make it harder for police to find the real criminals by refusing to cooperate!  Why can’t an honest citizen collaborate with police, so they can find criminals and terrorists?

What is wrong here?  In the “Don’t talk to Cops #1” video, a law school professor explains, that even a hard core criminal lawyer could get himself trouble, if he talked to police. There are so many laws. You might be found a felon for possessing a lobster that was packed in violation of Native Indian reservation law, or Honduran Law.

Never talk to a tax official. It is impossible, not to be in violation of one of the millions of articles of tax law. in “Don’t talk to Cops #2”, a policeman explains: if he follows a car, he is certain that pretty soon he can nail the driver for some traffic violation. If the honest normal citizen cannot collaborate with police, cannot help police to make their work easier, something is wrong. Or am I the only one thinking this way?

Overcriminalization: criminalizing trivial or harmless behavior.

The Crime of Living

Government run amok.

Posted October 19, 2010

The new term “overcriminalization” describes the last few decades’ legislative orgy of criminalizing trivial or harmless behavior. Under “zero tolerance” the legal system has shifted ever closer to a vast police state. From 2000 to 2007 Congress added 452 new federal crimes to the 4,450 already in effect and the roughly 300,000 regulations that can be enforced criminally. “Get tough” punishments and innovative new crimes have brought career-making headlines to politicians, who encountered little resistance.

Traditionally civil offenses now resemble criminal ones in their punishment. For example, it is commonplace for judges to imprison “deadbeat dads” who cannot pay child support for civil contempt of court. Not even children are exempt. Petty offenses such as “sexting” between teens are felonies and can be severely punished; in grade schools police are sometimes called to control children who throw temper tantrums. Everyday life has been criminalized.

The book Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent, by libertarian attorney Harvey Silverglate, details how you are a felon right now because going through one day without violating the law repeatedly is virtually impossible.
Source: The Crime of Living
Three Felonies a Day:

How the Feds Target the Innocent

by

Harvey A. Silverglate $25.95 1594032556
Go Directly to Jail: The Criminalization of Almost Everything by Gene Healy $17.95 1930865635

The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Law Enforcement Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice by Paul Craig Roberts $14.95 0307396061

on June 28, 2007, Breitbart.com reported research by Northwestern Professor Bruce Spencer […] Spencer discovered that innocent defendants had a 25% chance of being wrongfully convicted by juries and 37% chance of being wrongfully convicted by a judge. In contrast, Spencer found only a 10% chance a jury would acquit a guilty person and a 13% chance a judge would acquit a guilty person. […] According to Northwestern University law professor Jack Heinz, the concentration of errors in wrongful convictions result from "the strong presumption of guilt when someone is arrested and brought to trial."

[…] criminologist Richard Moran reported his research findings in the New York Times on August 2, 2007: ‘My recently completed study of the 124 exonerations of death row inmates in America from 1973 to 2007 indicated that about 80%, or about two thirds, of their so-called wrongful convictions resulted not from good-faith mistakes or errors, but from intentional, willful, malicious prosecutions by criminal justice personnel.’

We have too many victimless crimes, harsh punishment for petty crimes, and too many laws. Every single citizen commits (harmless) crimes and felonies with regularity and is in danger of arrest and conviction. And over 99% of these “crimes” remain unpunished, with the occasional unlucky guy who gets convicted. Potential crimes include: copyright infringement, underage sex among minors (hey, maybe you had sex with a minor when you were 15 and there is no statute of limitation), potential vengeful charges of rape and sex abuse, underage drinking, drug consumption, indadvertent possession of child porn (most men probably have some picture on their hard drive that potentially could be of a 17 year old nude).

certain practical steps could greatly alleviate the suffering of the law’s innocent victims. They include:

  • eliminating the ability of civil judges to imprison debtors for contempt of court;
  • reestablishing the need to prove “criminal intent” for criminal charges;
  • ceasing to prosecute victimless crimes, like drug use and sex between consenting adults;
  • eliminating prosecutorial immunity for corrupt or excessive prosecution;
  • enforcing constitutional protections such as “the presumption of innocence”; and
  • making all courts, including family courts, transparent.

Overcriminalization threatens everyone. It does not matter how peaceful or law-abiding you mean to be. Today you are a criminal. Tomorrow you may be a prisoner.
Source: The Crime of Living

  • How Long Can You Go Without Infringing On Copyright: Nowadays we infringe copyrights numerous times throughout the day without even thinking about it. Watching an unauthorized SNL clip on YouTube. Playing the radio in the background at work where customers can hear. Loaning a copy of your Finding Nemo DVD to play at your kids’ daycare. Downloading clip art to use in a personal scrapbook. Scanning your own wedding photos. Forwarding a funny photograph to a friend. Loaning a co-worker some software.

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