As a German I have to emphasize that this has no support at all in Germany. The uproar was huge today and its seen as a misuse of power by the politician. Especially as he is not acting as a politician but as representative of the public office of interior. The search warrant needs to be issued by a judge and I'm sure there will be formal investigations how this happened. I would not be surprised if he will be forced to resign. There are also elections happening and misuse of power is seen very badly throughout the people.
It's still a fact that in Germany you have to be careful how you express yourself. It was a total shock to me to arrive in the States and hear my cab driver unload on the US President at the time. He really wasn't choosing his words very carefully, to the point that I had to wonder if this was some kind of a test by the INS. I still chuckle today about how my views have changed since then, and how much more comfortable I am today with criticizing people, especially those in power.
> It's still a fact that in Germany you have to be careful how you express yourself.
Is that a fact? That's news to me. You might not hear as much "unloading" in Germany simply because it's not yet as polarized as it is in the US but certainly there wouldn't be any repercussions as far as I'm aware. What exactly are you talking about?
They exist but primarily protect private people. If the court determines that you are a “public figure” (I forget the legal term; IANAL) — such as CEOs of publicly traded companies, or politicians, etc. — then the bar for winning a case for defamation goes up significantly.
Furthermore speech that is essentially opinion or critique is a defense against defamation that can cause the case to be dismissed before trial. 1st Amendment protections from the US Constitution.
If you’re careful to word what you’re saying as a statement of your opinion rather than an assertion of fact, then a defendant has little chance at winning a defamation lawsuit from what I understand.
Lastly, if what you’re saying is factually true then that offers an absolute defense against a defamation lawsuit; you would need to be able to prove that however.
There are some country-wide precedents that SCOTUS has ruled on; otherwise laws are set by individual states from what I understand.
Can you give an example? I’ve never heard of such a case. You might be thinking of scenarios where people are arrested and prosecuted for resisting arrest, making threats against police officer, or crimes of that nature.
There will be limits of what you can say to police before you also run afoul of laws against public nuisance. Just as you would not want a random person to shout epithets and slurs at you and follow you down the sidewalk talking trash at you, which may be a misdemeanor crime in some jurisdictions (like disturbing the peace), the same is likely true for police if you were to interact with them in that way.
I cannot imagine anyone being prosecuted for publishing criticism about the performance/behavior of individual officers during a police encounter after the fact, or publishing criticism of the police department in their city generally.
While interacting with police, if you are being detained, beyond providing any information you are required to provide by law, which differs by state and circumstance (such as if driving a motor vehicle) - know your rights and obligations - it is wise to say “I invoke my fifth amendment right to remain silent” in response to any questions; as a suspect there are only downsides to having a conversation with police as anything you say can be used against you in court. During an interaction with police is not a wise time for criticism of police in general, the department in particular, or the specific officers at the scene.
Keep in mind that the list above is not 100% relevant for these examples. You can also just find articles if you google 'beleidigung' and 'verurteilt'.
Ask any Strafrechtsanwalt in your area and they'll confirm this. This is not even a controversial thing at all.
You still are not allowed to insult not just the German Leader (which Germany hasn't had in 84 years), but anyone at all.
Insults are a misdemeanor crime and you can and will be fined several thousand dollars for calling your local cop an asshole or whoreson, for instance. (Which is better than the US where you will likely get molested, possibly arrested, and might get shot for the unwritten crime of 'contempt of cop'.)
Yes, it is. Insults and defamation are pretty common law-problems in Germany, because of which most people are rather careful in what they say about specific people. Basically, if they have power or money, don't trigger them, because the one paying will likely be you at the end. Though, Online this again a bit different, as many people have not much awareness about legal situation there, and law enforcement was a bit lax. This changed with new laws recently.
A while ago a Berlin court decided that online posts saying "Drecksfotze"/"Schlampe"/"Knatter sie doch mal einer so richtig durch, bis sie wieder normal wird." (filthy cunt/bitch/someone fuck her hard until she becomes normal again) are still below the threshold that top politicians have to endure before they can sue for insult, so the ability to "unload" on top politicians doesn't seem to be in any danger in Germany.
Although this ruling was widely criticized, because there is some societal understanding that politicians are also humans who need some level of protection, and that unrestricted hate speech always has the potential to transform into physical violence sooner or later.
I'm not German, but I have noticed quite the opposite just yesterday actually:
Some non-german person posted a picture of Angela Merkel and highlighted how incredible she is and humble and all the good work she did and how she should be an example for their own (the posters) country and other politicians in the world.
The result: Lots of people agreed with the overall sentiment and applauded her achievements... well, besides German LinkedIn users, many went full "Reddit" (on LinkedIn)... Many "not nice words were written" by people using their professional profile - it was surreal to see.
‘Be careful how to express yourself’ is needlessly conspicuous. Never in my life have I seen anyone hold back to criticize politicians or people in power, most certainly not in some cab.
As I wrote somewhere else, if you think the first amendment gives you the possibility to say what you want to whom you want, without any consequences, go to the nearest policeman, start insulting him and his family. I am sure there will not be a problem, and he’ll sit through it for hours, if you just make clear you’re exercising your first amendment rights.
To expand on this: the politician is defending himself by saying that it is standard procedure for a case like this but I can assure you it is not.
The police is not taking insults seriously, especially not being called "dick". On Twitter some semi-famous people stated that they routinely go to the police because people threaten their lives but the police won't do anything.
One interesting fact that the politician is not mentioning is that he as a Senator des Innern (senator of interior of the state of Hamburg) can actually order the attorney general of their state to investigate something. This has been criticized by law experts multiple times in the past because it makes the judiciary branch not strictly independent from the legislative branch in Germany. No attorney general will deny a request of their boss and will instead push hard for a judge (who are independent) to sign a search warrant. Plus the Landgericht Hamburg (lowest court in Hamburg) has made some very, very questionable rulings in the past related to technology.
Everything here has written abuse of power all over it. It's a systemic failure that is being exploited and Andy Grote tries way too hard to deny it.
While it does happen, "all the time" seems to suggest it happens every week. I believe instead police raids on private homes for e.g. smaller drug related charges happen occasionally. This is the first case I hear of which is such an abuse of power about an insult online.
A spokesperson for the Hamburg Police said that they've carried out a ~50 raids of homes of people for insults/hate speech. And that's just one city. So more than once a week in a single city.
They're talking about both and what's your source for the fact that this claim is disputed? Who would even have such data if not the police. Please link your source as well as I've linked mine, which supports what I said.
Your own link is saying it's disputed. And the Police claiming something, doesn't mean it must be true. Especially if we are talking about someone from public relation, which are notorious for 'miscommunication happening' with such details.
No it doesn't. There's absolutely nothing in there that even hints at the fact that the numbers are disputed.
> And the Police claiming something, doesn't mean it must be true. Especially if we are talking about someone from public relation, which are notorious for 'miscommunication happening' with such details.
Sure. If you have better data that disputes what she's saying you're free to share it.
> I'm sure there will be formal investigations how this happened
It happened because you allowed your politicians to pass laws that regulate allowable speech, as many other countries have done. I’m sure it was controversial, but most likely also had a considerable amount of support from people who didn’t like the kinds of speech they thought this would criminalize. A distinctive feature of this case is that it has created a public controversy, but if this has happened you can be sure many people have already fallen victim to this injustice without drawing any sympathy from the general public. Even if there is no prosecution, the police have already succeeded in intimidating the victim, their children, and disrupting their life. This type of speech criminalization will always lead to this type of outcome. It is not a mistake, or an outlier, it is an unavoidable consequence of these policies.
It doesn't seem like you are very familiar with German politics or culture, but this is definitely an outlier. Freedom of speech is a central part of our constitution. Defamation is one of the very few ways and enforcement and interpretation is mostly restricted to defamation of policemen. This is the reason why this has resulted in an outcry as the proportionality does not respond to the interpretation how defamation is treated legally.
This is 100% completely wrong. There's §185 and that applies to all citizens. That's the law, there's no such thing as Beamtenbeleidigung or other stuff that gets quotes often. We have to work on educating people that insulting the police is no different than insulting your neighbor. Such a law just doesn't exist and it never did.
I’m sure as a member of that culture, your opinions are opinions are not at all influenced by any number of different political, nationalistic or cultural biases. But from the perspective of an outsider, you have all of the same criminal statutes against speech that most other western democracies have been gradually implementing. The only thing that’s slightly different about Germany, is that you also have defamation laws that are more typical of 3rd world country, like say Thailand.
I’m sure the values of free speech are important to Germans, but much like in the UK or any number of other of places, those values haven’t been preserved in legislation, and you’ve let yourself slowly compromise them away over a number of decades.
You argue that the Germans have let the lawmakers erode the law of free speech over time. This does not make sense, since the laws and the system allowing for the abuse of power by this minister are very old. The fact that this could have been abused for the last 50 years and happened only now seems to strongly suggest that your argument does not hold true.
Whether this particular case would have been enforceable 50 years ago or not doesn’t undermine my point at all. Germany (like almost every other western democracy) has been slowly eroding freedom of expression liberties. However restrictive the country was 50 years ago, it’s more restrictive now, both as existing laws as applied to novel new speech suppression scenarios, and as new laws are created. As recently as 2017 (as far as I’m aware) Germany has been legislating new speech criminalizations (with the Network Enforcement Act), which was rather widely criticized for suppressing freedom of expression and the press.
The German basic law protects people's personal honour (article 5, freedom of expression), and this goes back hundreds of years. (strafrechtlicher Ehrschutz).
>"These rights shall find their limits in the provisions of general laws, in provisions for the protection of young persons and in the right to personal honour."
This is reflected in the German criminal code Beleidigung(Insult), unchanged for about 150 years.
>"The penalty for insult is imprisonment for a term not exceeding one year or a fine and, if the insult is committed by means of an assault, imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years or a fine."
This extends to everyone, not just politicians. For example, flipping someone off is not legal, and you'll be fined if someone were to take legal action. The headline of the article and the general tone of is misleading.
The problem in this case is that "Pimmel"(willy,pecker) is a minor insult which rather belongs to the schoolyard but they still did a house search although the perpetrator has long since confessed.
On the other hand, Reanate Künast first had to fight in court for "Drecks Fotze" (dirty c**t) to be rated as an insult.
What I don‘t understand is how they differentiate this sort of „insult“ from “satire”. There are some protections around artistic freedom and you should be allowed to make fun of someone. There was a well-known [“Böhmermann vs. Erdogan”](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Böhmermann-Affäre) case, where more serious insults than “Pimmel” were used, but the prosecution was terminated - probably due to a huge amount of public pressure - but it’s still strange and feels arbitrary.
I would like a balanced perspective on this. What do our German/European think about this? Is this expected or a random event? Does this have public support?
It's a bit early in the morning in Europe, so there are probably not a lot of users online, but since I'm awake anyway, I can give you my opinion: on one hand, there is definitely a sentiment that online hate is a problem and something needs to be done about it. On the other hand, I guess most would agree that this is an exaggerated response (probably the thinking behind it was: "we can't find all those other guys, but hey, this idiot actually confirmed it was his account, so let's make an example of him to show we are doing something about online hate"). But yeah, things like this happen.
A different example: there were some "creative" protests by environmentalists against the new "greenwashed" automobile fair IAA which has moved from Frankfurt to Munich since this year - defacing freeway signs etc.. Nine of the activists involved will be kept in "preventive custody" until the end of the fair (for one week) - https://twitter.com/mic_tra/status/1435529384174227459.
This has no support at all in Germany. The uproar was huge today and its seen as a misuse of power by the politician. Especially as he is not acting as a politician but as representative of the public office of interior. The search warrant needs to be issued by a judge and I'm sure there will be formal investigations how this happened. I would not be surprised if he will be forced to resign. There are also elections happening and misuse of power is seen very badly throughout the people.
The politician was bombed/trolled with real letters saying that he is indeed '1 pimmel', since what he did was a real dick move. Also, he didnt have his own internet address, so.. https://www.andygrote.de
Yes the whole public support aspect can swing this either way, if Twitter comes out in support of the politician then that user will be guilty before he even hits the court. If on the other hand they come out in support of the user, then it may very well just go away and be slap on the wrist affair.
But the sad thing is that most if not all twitter users, have seen far worse go unpunished.
I'm pointing out a false dichotomy, why do we have to "pick our poison"? Can you explain why I should pick one? I don't want to take any poison. I want free speech and I want universal healthcare. I don't want one or the other; that's moronic. One does not preclude the other, so I want both.
And as an American, Germans/Australians/etc. will still insist they're more free than me because of something arbitrary like free healthcare. I don't think there's anywhere I'd feel particularly more "free" all things considered aside from maybe Mars.
I suppose it depends how you look at it. There are different kinds of freedom. My main concern in the US is the absurd levels of incarceration over there, often for relatively trivial nonviolent offences that aren’t even crimes in many countries, and the politicisation of the judicial system. I’m a lot more confident I’d get fair treatment from the justice system in most European countries than I would in the US. The relationship between the police and the public in the states also seems dangerously adversarial and does not inspire me with confidence.
> The relationship between the police and the public in the states also seems dangerously adversarial and does not inspire me with confidence.
This is greatly exaggerated. Not that the bad things you see in the news don’t happen. Just that most interactions with the police aren’t in fact any more adversarial than in other countries.
I am not white, and I have been stopped by police multiple times in the US, Europe, and Asia, as well as selected for additional screening in airports in the US, London, and the Netherlands.
Whether the police were adversarial or not was not a function of whether they were in the US. Indeed the one time the police actually behaved in a threatening way was in the UK.
> My main concern in the US is the absurd levels of incarceration over there, often for relatively trivial nonviolent offences that aren’t even crimes in many countries, and the politicisation of the judicial system.
That’s such an odd thing to say on a article about someone getting their home raided bec they called someone a dick in Europe…
It’s a matter of proportionality. This case us getting massive coverage, it’s clearly an extreme outlier. I don’t think it’s reasonable to equate that with many hundreds of thousands of people literally in gaol.
I suppose Stalin was right, to paraphrase. One person is a tragedy, hundreds of thousands is a statistic.
Like driving while poor. It’s very very common for someone to get a fine that they can not pay, then lose their drivers license for failure to pay. Then get stopped and have to deal with driving without a license, which can include jail time.
You may also be missing the fact that many other countries weren’t designed around needing a car. Chances are, if you can’t afford a fine in the first place, losing access to driving will guarantee that you cannot work, making it less likely you can afford to pay the fine. It’s the escalation that’s the problem, but also indicative of the punitive nature of laws weighted against underclasses. Any law with a fixed rate fine is essentially a law that “only exists” for the poor.
You may be right that this is a world wide problem, and I’m only imagining places that don’t punish the poor so harshly. That said, I saw an article recently that gives me hope. It was a jurisdiction in the US where police handed out gift cards to some auto parts store instead of citations when pulling over vehicles for faulty equipment. While the cynic in me thinks this is just a play by the auto parts store to grow it’s market, I like to think it’ll provide good data to drive policy.
I can't speak for other countries, but here in the UK courts can be resistant to charges snowballing like this against a defendant as it's a recognised problem. Fines can be delayed, split into instalments, reduced or put pending against credit history for up to 5 years - although if they find you are able to pay but unwilling they get tough fast. DWL can result in longer suspension of a license, fines, or community service.
It does help that traveling by public transport here is a lot less likely to be a problem, to be fair.
How about using public places in a way you see fit (while not endangering others), e.g. skateboarding or biking in town?
How about letting your kids go to school or to a playground without perpetual parental surveillance, without you being persecuted?
How about the right to sit at a beach in whatever (non)clothing you want? How about just changing into your swimming shorts just there on the beach?
How about only being prosecuted for DUI if you were actually under the influence, and not because a passenger had a bottle of beer in their hand?
How about sitting with your friends in any city square in summer, listening to street musicians and drink a beer, and then walk to the next bar while drinking your beer?
How about just playing music on the radio without censoring ‘bad words’, and even having censored CDs in the stores?
How about someone cursing on national television without this becoming a scandal, or someone showing a breast on television as a singer on stage without it ending your career?
How about driving as fast as you want?
And to your example: how about having actual choice of leaving a job because health insurance is not tied to a job? (Yeah I know, with COBRA you can simply pay a couple thousand a month and just keep your insurance)
How about being able to actually retire in old age and not having to work at Waffle House and Walmart with 80?
How about yelling at some asshole in the parking lot without being legally shot dead because of stand-your-ground?
How about the freedom to study at a college of your choosing, without admission scandals and bribery, and without ruining your future with 6 digit debt?
How about freedom from religion, and still being electable for high office as atheist?
How about never having to worry whether you are in a good enough area of town to just drive through?
How about freely choosing your health insurance rather than being forced to pick one of the two your employer has contracts with?
How about freely choosing internet / power / gas, with the dramatic drops in price that go along with competition in a free market?
Murder: People lose the freedom to murder people, but gain the freedom to not be murdered. American society considers taking the first freedom away to result in better society overall. Germany does the same.
Insults: People lose the freedom to insult other people, but gain the freedom not to be insulted. German society considers taking away the first freedom to result in a better society overall. Americans take the opposite side here.
See, it's actually not at all a naive question of "who has more freedom", because each side can be argued to be more free than the other. Ultimately, it comes down to what choice results in a 'better', more livable society.
Germany and the US simply make different tradeoffs.
If you think the first amendment ensures your right to call anyone a dick, I suggest you go to the nearest cop you can find and start insulting him, his mother, his family, his children. I am sure if you tell him you’re just exercising your first amendment right, he will endure this for hours without batting an eye.
I fear that too. Freedom has always been paid for with blood, so if it's just meekly handed back, we are robbing our grandchildren and passing that cost on to them.
That said, what parts of the world are you talking about? If you look at the insults being freely hurled on twitter at politicians around the the English speaking western world, I'm not sure how bad it is here yet. Maybe it's only a problem there if you insult the wrong type of politician?
> Why should it be legal to publicly insult someone?
How do you define an insult? Would it be insulting to call someone a nazi, white supremacist, racist, misogynist, Russian agent, heartless, senile? What if those things were true or you believed them to be true or at least a valid comparison to some degree? What if you call a religion or ideology bad or point out bad things about its teachings? Even if what you say is true, it can still be taken as insults by followers. Should blasphemy be outlawed?
> You can't punch people in the USA. Does that make the country not particularly free?
Because as an American you put the border at physical violence but think verbal violence doesn't matter. You see that as freedom. I see it as a lack of culture. Far more than an ocean separates these two continents.
Note that it is entirely play pretend anyway. I know for a fact that I can actually say and do far more here than the American society would tolerate in the USA.
Because the line of physical violence is pretty clear cut. The line at which someone gets offended is not and can vary drastically depending on the person, religion, current events, etc. Laws need clear definitions.
> Because as an American you put the border at physical violence but think verbal violence doesn't matter. You see that as freedom. I see it as a lack of culture. Far more than an ocean separates these two continents.
This, for instance, is clearly an insult; please report to the nearest detention center for your reeducation immediately. /s
But seriously, no; insults are subjective enough to be a terrible legal basis.
Is calling someone fat when they are indeed fat an insult? It obviously depends on context, intent, and delivery. Any definition is going to be nebulous.
Worlds can hurt just as much if not more. Insults are unneeded. They are unnecessary to a discussion and they are a form of violence. Why should they be legal?
It’s possible for a democratic political system to exist, and still prohibit insulting politicians. It’s quite possible to criticize any politician without resulting to ad hominem attacks. Even the former US Vice President Dick Cheney nearly faced consequences for violating senate rules by telling a senator to “go f___ himself.”
Do you genuinely believe that laws that try to separate criticize versus insult can work?
I can't see anything other than laws like that being abused by politicians and government officials to quell speech and create a chilling effect amongst the populace.
Dueling used to be acceptable in the US and that didn’t prevent free speech. As long as it’s limited to reasonable fines simply requiring civility is unlikely to significantly quell free speech even if it did get abused by government officials.
What goes around comes around. Mr Cheney got a nice cold serving of revenge by a constituent in Miss. who, apropos, was inspired by mr Cheney's own exchange with sen. Pat Leahy. Around the :24s mark https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmhmYYjrVUY To his credit Cheney took it in stride.
Are you talking about Cheney swearing at Durban? I don't recall him facing any consequences. All I remember is some pearl clutching about it and then nothing else. I don't think he even broke any senate rules, as the senate was not in session at the time he swore. Since then, public swearing and insults by US politicians seems to have only increased.
There was some tut tutting about the VP technically being a senator since the VP casts tie-breaking senate votes. But I don’t think it went anywhere serious. Anyways, it later turned out the VP is allowed to shoot people without consequences too, so it seems VPs are given a certain amount of immunity. Point is, there are rules on political speech, but it doesn’t have to quell political debate.
Are they wrong? Which is more likely to affect any given individual? Which country do you have the best chance of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in?
> Which is more likely to affect any given individual?
That metric is hilariously wrong. Consider a country with universal healthcare, but where only a single political party is allowed. You're much more likely to face medical issues in your life, than wanting to start your own party and being prevented.
Does that make the one-party-state more free than every country without universal healthcare?
In other words, by phrasing it as "freedom to live in comfort and safety", you are conflating comfort and safety with freedom.
If the one-party-ness doesn't actually affect anyone living there, then yes. Most of us would say that the problems with one-party states are not limited to the tiny minority of people who would want to start a new political party, but also has a large effect on people who disagree with government policies but have no representation.
Is that wrong? Huxley deliberately intended it as a critique of post-Christian morality; that people are mostly free of any responsibility is very much part of the point.
Proportions don't matter in this case. Individuals immigrating each year and the waitlist to do so does. Otherwise you're comparing admission policies instead of the will to live in that place.
Comparing absolute numbers is surely meaningless - if the US was arbitrarily split in half, there would be half as many immigrants to each half, but that wouldn't mean the US was suddenly half as attractive to immigrate to.
How do you deal with the healthcare thing? I'm not thrilled about the idea of getting arrested for calling someone a dick online, but realistically that seems like a much smaller risk to my prospects of a good life than the risk of medical bankruptcy if I lived in the US, particularly with the risk of losing health insurance through at-will firing.
(A dickhead manager lying and trying to fire me was the most stressful experience of my life even when I knew I was in the right and got a decent payout eventually; I can't imagine going through that with no legal protection)
Until you get stopped in Nevada and your possessions are ceased by the cops. Or until you get swatted. Or you piss Elon Musk off and he sends cops after you.
The title and article are wrong. They raided his ex's apartment (a household with 2 small kids; he was still registered as living there but had moved out) even after the offender presented himself to police and admitted sending that Tweet.
Citation needed. Use of police force in the ways you're describing is exceedingly rare in the US. If there is an uptick in the last 4 years, it would seem to me mostly due to the increase in death threats against politicians and their families by an increasingly polarized right wing.
Should be noted that this is a pretty strange case. The case came originally from the police, the politician was just asked later to report it too, because law demands it. And that insult is really, really weak, even by German standards. The raid was also unnecessary, as they already had the culprits' statement of guilty. And on top they even raided the wrong house.
On the side, looking up the culprit, he seems to be a political activist, from the left spectrum which has many bad blood in the city where this happened. So my guess is, this case has a political background, and the insult was just a pretext to justify the means.
I know this shouldn't be made fun of, and as a German I am very upset about it. But: "Pimmelgate" is an awesome name.
Also, don't politicians know about the Streisand effect? If they hadn't raided this guy, nobody would know about the Tweet, and nobody would care one bit. Ethics and law aside, this was just a very dumb move.
> The Hamburg police confirmed to The Post that it had searched the house of the Twitter user behind the @pauli_zoo handle early Wednesday to “gather evidence"
I wonder what kind of evidence they were looking for?
This is one of the cases where I'm going to ask why I'm downvoted. The HN title says the opposite of what the WaPo title says. And not only is this not a problem, but I'm causing problems by pointing it out?
I didn’t downvote, but I’m not sure what’s going on with HN today —- this is the third article I’ve seen with lots of HN metacomments.
That said, they’re probably right that the title should be fixed. It’s just getting a bit... well. I just wish we would all be a little more grateful for how much effort a site like HN takes to run. It’s also not so easy to get good moderators with tasteful editing abilities; imagine what a disaster it would be if Reddit let a subset of mods control most titles on /r/all.
I suspect the title is broken in this case because the title gardeners are taking a well-deserved break, hopefully enjoying the evening with their families.
Not to take away from your comment, you're free to think and feel as you like, but you shouldn't really be trying to cram your views down other people's throats. You can feel "appreciative" and find wholesome justifications for anything basically (that includes the heinous stuff) but we don't all do it all the time. Feel free to do it as much as you like, but let others feel rightfully annoyed. I doubt anyone is blaming HN for this, but the person who posted the link (and possibly the original WaPo title).
Yeah, didn't even realize earlier that something ate the Police. Can't edit it myself anymore, though. Should've editorialized it after all and put more context into it, wouldn't have happened then.
He doesn't, that's just an editorialized translation[1], the straight Google translation doesn't have the possessive pronoun: "There was a house search at 6:00 this morning. 6 officers in the apartment."
But we can refer to it as his strawberry cake for all I care, as long as it's understood that he doesn't actually live there anymore[2]. This wasn't as widely reported as the original story, and along with the fact that the guy had already talked to the authorities and admitted to the foul deed, I found it made the whole thing even more outrageous.
Before the coup that happened a few days ago, my country was casually known as a dictatorship. You don't insult politicians, not especially on a public place. When you are home, you check if the coast is clear before you call the president names. Otherwise you get an armed and humiliating response, if not tragic.
Looks like lots of democratic countries are looking at us with envy and for inspiration these days.
It's also reminiscent of Lèse-majesté --something Thai Royalty likes bandying about. Politicians should not think themselves above the population and the police should not act as their shushers.
It can only be called a coup if it's successful in actually changing the government. If it's not, you can argue endlessly (as in the Jan. 6 case) if it qualifies as an "attempted coup" (which implies that it had a remote chance of succeeding).
> if it qualifies as an "attempted coup" (which implies that it had a remote chance of succeeding
No, an "attempted coup" means an attempt at a coup d'état. Probability of success doesn't matter for an attempt to be classified as an attempt, only intentions.
Yes, I think a coup implies that it was perpetrated by people already in government, such as the military, or an opposition party. A riot by the populace that aims to violently remove or influence the government is more properly called an insurrection, a la the French Revolution.
People already part of the government could be involved in triggering an insurrection, such as with the Jacobins involved in the Insurrection of 1792, but it still counts as an insurrection and not a coup because it is carried out by the population, not by forces working for the government, such as assassins or the military.
> I sure am glad to live in a country where freedoms are explicitly guaranteed by a constitutional decree.
I can only assume you're referring to the US's Constitution.
Rights that are apparently guaranteed by the US Constitution are routinely ignored by all levels of US Government.
You may get your day in court, you may even have the court rule in your favour. That does not mean you're made whole, or that the government will back down and stop doing things that infringe upon your rights.
The constitution carries more weight than you think: the highest governments in the US are the states which delegate their power to DC via the constitution. It’s a contract, and when violated the power is removed.
Please sir show me the contract Americans have signed without duress or coercion. Simply put all governments exist via the rule of force and individual sovereignty does not depent on despots in power.
Does the name Edward Snowden ring a bell, and the total surveillance state programs in the US, against US citizens, he revealed?
-the perpetual drive of FBI etc to have e.g. phones decrypted, or have companies install back doors? (e.g. Bernardino)?
- the last administrations systematic programs against ‘unpleasant’ journalists?
- black sites and places like Guantanamo that you could just disappear to?
- civil forfeiture laws that allow the police, without any process, to take your personal property, without any wrongdoing on your part?
- how many people are killed by police in those other countries (at all), and also, how many times does this lead to a prosecution of the officer in question?
America has had its overreaches in recent history - the Florida covid whistle-blower and so forth.
I have to think that officials are hesitant to engage in many of the petty tyranny we see in other western countries, however, at a rate proportional to the degree to which their constituents are armed. If a police raid has a non trivial chance of turning into a shootout, it's a tool frequently withheld, and probably never used over a tweet.
The wrongful death process in civil courts would also destroy the life of any official who provoked a deadly raid over social media.
She was a stupid kid and did stupid kid things, millennial style. She went through the legal system for crossing the line, but by the time she held the job for Florida state government - a decade later - she seems to have married, had children, found a respectable job, and was otherwise a normal human being. And she is probably mortified over the student/professor bad soap, stalker drama she inflicted on the world.
At worst she was a psycho college girlfriend cliché. At best she's a redemption story, and good for her if that's the case.
She never finished her degree, but still found a job as a data scientist, then blew it up because Florida officials wanted to lie.
Have empathy and practice forgiveness, especially on people who did nothing to you. It costs you nothing to withhold what amounts to snide gossip.
Which is at the mercy of interpretation from the court; we must always be vigilant and be ready to agitate against this becoming common, as your constitution doesn’t actually guarantee anything: humans are still the ones who run and decide things. The constitution isn’t the silicon American society runs on, it’s more firmware, to use a shitty analogy.
The US is not without flaws, we have SESTA and FOSTA, which restrict website content, passed with minimal outcry, and the potentially upcoming EARN IT[0] and LAED[1] acts, which will threaten end-to-end encryption and more. The only senator vaguely aware of these problems seems to be Ron Wyden.
Freedom to not have any vacations for years, freedom to not get medical aid, freedom to get fired over Twitter on a whim, freedom to get shot by the police, freedom to be subject to government surveillance, freedom to have a flawed democracy, freedom to have your children shot in school by deranged classmates... Freedom doesn't necessarily mean "better".
