[Update 5 November 2013] Outsource the police state to charity: The Swiss NGO Terre des Hommes lays a
honey-trap for those who prize the bud before it flowers; those who fall for it find their photos
and addresses passed to the police:
L'ONG Terre des Hommes, qui se
faisait passer sur Internet pour une fillette philippine, a annoncé aujourd'hui
que plus de 20.000 "prédateurs" l'avait contactée, prêts à payer pour
voir cette enfant de dix ans se livrer à des actes sexuels par webcam. Plus de
mille d'entre eux ont été identifiés.
L'ONG a pu retrouver leurs
adresses, leurs numéros de téléphone et des photos d'eux, et a transmis leur
identité aux autorités compétentes, en particulier à Interpol.
http://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-actu/2013/11/04/97001-20131104FILWWW00424-une-ong-piege-20000-pedophiles.php?m_i=t6qtZtw4L9Btyq0gMX%2B62pGgMrSYElU6mFRtQex2jt1U9jOZw
This is a remarkably efficient way to settle scores
anonymously.. Simply pass a mass
of addresses to Interpol, of purported pervs & perps, salted among which
are those of one’s rivals and enemies.
Now the burden of proof is on them, as they are pilloried.
And people are worried about a federal agency with better
things to do than worry about Joe Random’s private life, getting their “metadata”! Not a patch on Terre des Hommes.
A minor legal nicety:
Notice that, even in the case of those who were genuinely interested, as
opposed to just curious or nosing journalistically around, what they stand
accused of is not even actually “looking at someone up and down”, since they
never did get a glimpse.
Nor was there even a genuine Someone to look at, neither up nor down nor
sideways, since the pretended mini-maid was a fiction.
~
Was
für Krimi liest wohl Dr. Sigmund Freud?
Schauen
Sie mal!
~
[Update 27 January 2013] An
astonishing piece of legal overreach, the doctrine of joint and
several liability, is now being pressed into service against individual
viewers of forbidden images:
~
In our post below, from October,
we noted that France (whose government is now pushing for matrimony of inverts,
as well as “familles homoparentales”) has proposed outlawing things like
“looking at someone up and down” (though presumably only men ogling women would
be subject to actual sanctions).
Now Switzerland jumps into the P.C. soup: A new law would outlaw, not merely looking longingly at an actual person, but viewing a photograph deemed naughty in the eyes of the law. Nay more, even if you are stone-blind you might be grasped by the long paw of the law, since the basis of legal charges will be simply the register of sites visited on the Internet -- whether or not you actually personally viewed the page. Indeed, you could easily be charged, and disgraced in all society, for having left your computer at work unattended, if, during the interval of your absence, a fellow-worker were to surf in forbidden waters. That it wasn’t you might be a defence (if you can somehow prove it), at your eventual trial; but you can still be charged, disgraced, and saddled with bankrupting lawyer’s fees.
-- Stop and ask yourself: Could that possibly be true? Am I just making it up? Have things really come to that?
Well, judge for yourself, from today’s article in the highly
respected Neue Zürcher Zeitung:
Auch das blosse Anschauen von Pornografie wird strafbar
Wenn ein Internetnutzer solches
Bildmaterial auf die Festplatte oder andere Datenträger herunterlädt, macht er
sich strafbar – nicht jedoch, wenn er es lediglich online betrachtet. Das soll
sich nun ändern: Auch der besitzlose Konsum soll künftig strafbar sein.
Finde man im Internetspeicher des
Verdächtigen entsprechende Daten, so genüge dies.
Als Internetnutzer mag man sich nun
fragen, ob es bereits kriminell ist, wenn man beim Surfen ohne Absicht auf eine
Seite gelangt, die harte Pornografie enthält. Oder ob man an seinem
Arbeitsplatz künftig besser aufpassen muss, damit kein Dritter die Mittagspause
oder andere Abwesenheiten ausnutzt und auf dem Computer einschlägige Seiten
aufruft. Der Bundesrat betont in seiner Botschaft, dass nicht jeder Kontakt mit
harter Pornografie, sondern nur der vorsätzliche Konsum bestraft werden soll.
Es werde Aufgabe der Gerichte sein festzulegen, unter welchen Umständen darauf
geschlossen werden könne. Laut Bundesrat dürften sich insbesondere die Anzahl
der aufgerufenen Seiten und Bilder sowie der Fundort der Dateien als
entscheidend erweisen.
And don’t be fooled by that restriction to “harte”
naughtinesses: in this
ephebophilophobic age, that qualification is interpreted quite broadly, in a way that would have caused
previous centuries to gape.
For instance, viewing this painting, from almost two centuries ago,
could soon land you in prison:
William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905): Cupidon (L'Amour Mouille) |
Ha! Too late! You looked! You - are - doooomed ....
*
Sie fahren also
gleich ins Gefängnis.
Was wollen Sie wohl
lesen, da drinnen?
Für psychologisch
tiefgreifende Krimis,
in pikanter
amerikanischer Mundart,
und christlich gesinnt,
klicken Sie bitte
hier:
*
[Update 16 March 2014] Ha! Sebastian Edathy hat angeschaut! And now he has fled for his life:
http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/41/41258/1.html
As often, though, in the face of hair-raising news of legal extremism, we are reassured to find the readers are unconvinced. Here they mock the pretentions of Switzerland (traditionally so lax in the matter of providing banking services to criminals) to become the political-correctness Mouse That Roared:
http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/41/41258/1.html
Plebs tunc canit
clamorosa:
Crucifige, crucifige.
|
As often, though, in the face of hair-raising news of legal extremism, we are reassured to find the readers are unconvinced. Here they mock the pretentions of Switzerland (traditionally so lax in the matter of providing banking services to criminals) to become the political-correctness Mouse That Roared:
--------
Das ist das herzige an einem
Kleinstaat: Er beschäftigt sich wirklich mit kleinen Dingen. Die grossen
(Finanzregeln) überlässt er den Grossen in Washington, Brüssel, Berlin oder
schiebt sie wie eine heisse Kartoffel vor sich her (Minder-Initiative)
--
Guten Morgen, Schnüffelstaat!
---
Die Bevormundung der staatl.
Behörden wird immer mehr ausgebaut. Bürger werden zu unmündigen Kindern
erklärt. Was will man damit erreichen? Mah sieht doch in Staaten in denen von
die Prohibition herrscht wie in Schweden oder Finnland, was dabei herauskommt.
Es wird unmässig konsumiert. Alles was verboten ist, ist gerade für den
Menschen interressant. Nein, das ist ein Schildbürgerstreich. Mehr nicht.
*
Falls Sie im
Doktor-Justiz-Sammelsurium
weiterblättern
möchten,
Bitte hier
klicken:
*
~ ~
[Original post from Oct 2012] ~
~
The provocative,
semi-see-through, form-fitting (or padded where the form must be
supplied), out-scooped, bust-upthrusting, crotch-clutching, slitted and
slotted, streetwalk-ready, stiletto-heel-mounted and tricked-out with
cosmetics sort of get-up, that is designed to attract such looks, will
of course remain legal as before.
* * *
~ Commercial break ~
Relief for
beleaguered Nook lovers!
We now return you to
your regularly scheduled essay.
* * *
~
We have a foretaste of the sanctions against
looking-up-and-down (here, in the milder version of remarking upon a new dress)
from this portrait of Mitteleuropa society in the Vorkriegszeit:
» Du hast ein neues Kleid«, sagte er, um sie betrachten zu dürfen; und
hörte sie antworten:
» Neu? Du bist bewandert in
meiner Toilette ?! «
» Habe ich nicht recht? «
» Doch. «
-- Thomas Mann, Der Zauberberg
(1924)
You can’t win, gentlemen; you cannot win.
~
Was für Krimi liest
wohl Dr. Sigmund Freud?
Schauen Sie mal!
~
Continuing
to plow through Ronald Steel’s classic biography of Walter Lippmann, I
stumbled just now upon the following passage: Lyndon Johnson, having been unceremoniously uploaded into the Presidency,
besieged the Lippmanns with invitations to dinner, as though they were old friends.
Such
a trifle would normally have seemed NTR, save that, shortly earlier
this morning, we had read that French feminists desire precisely to
outlaw such multiple invites; yet the Legislature, in their haste to
rush through new laws trashing males, unaccountably omitted such
egregious behavior from the list of punishable infractions:
“When
a boss invites 10 times a reluctant employee to dinner, is there a
sexual connotation to that?” asked Miss Baldeck, adding that she
believed that there was. Yet under the new legislation, it would not
qualify as harassment, she said.
Doubtless this oversight will be rectified in the next session.
(Although,
in all likelihood LBJ’s overzealousness would remain protected, since
it was man-on-man. The right of women and homosexuals to shower with
invitations the objects of their desires, are unlikely to to be
infringed. Beélzebub forbid, that any harm should come to thém !)
~
In his classic Das Unbehagen in der Kultur (1930),
Sigmund Freud outlined the psychic price we pay for civilization.
Not knocking civilization here -- it’s worth the psychic price. Every
normal male must repeatedly withstand the beckonings of his testes, and
is the better for having learned to do so. Yet some of those who do not share his
natural inclinations, are proceeding extraordinarily far in punishing
and repressing that inborn bloom, on the strength of which -- and
without which, not -- civilization has managed to survive and thrive,
through wind and wars and pestilence.
Thus, there are
much more bizarre provisions in this “anti-harassment” law, than you are
likely to read about in the anglophone press, where reports of the
legislation have been sanitized for popular consumption:
Avec la loi sur le harcèlement sexuel, la transphobie a fait son entrée au Code pénal.
"Voilà ce que l’on n’invente
pas." (French for: You can’t make this stuff up.)
Some readers who, unlike their legislative representatives, have not yet taken leave of their senses, respond:
La transphobie ? On n'a vraiment des gens desoeuvrés dans ce pays (payés grassement de plus) pour pondre ce genre de choses et légiférer dessus.
That
riposte is mild, and basically does not go beyond the confines of
politics. But the malaise which Freud addressed is stated sensibly by
another reader:
Je ne sais pas si je suis transphobe, mais sûr que cela me dégoûte, je n'y peux rien, c'est physique.
That
is no more than the wholesome, instinctive reaction, of any normal
person, confronted by these surgically self-emasculated grotesques. The
French law is trying to make us swallow a centipede.
La Manif pour tous, le 13 janvier 2013, sur le Champ-de-Mars. |
Dann mach doch die Bluse zu - Ein Aufschrei gegen den Gleichheitswahn (Birgit Kelle)
In Deutschland wird heftig diskutiert: über Frauenquote, Krippenplätze, Sexismus, über die Gleichstellung von Mann und Frau. Der eigentliche Skandal ist aber, dass diejenigen, die zu Hause bleiben und unsere Kinder erziehen, die Dummen sind. Warum eigentlich? Es ist doch das gute Recht jeder Frau, ihr Leben so zu leben, wie sie es glücklich macht. War der Feminismus nicht einst genau dafür eingetreten? Auf dem Weg der gleichen Rechte ist etwas verlorengegangen. Nämlich die Freude, einfach Frau zu sein. Dieses Buch ist eine Ermutigung für alle Frauen, die es gerne sind, es zeigen und das auch nicht ständig rechtfertigen müssen. Für Mütter, die gerne Mütter sind und die berufliche Laufbahn hinten anstellen. Sie alle haben in Deutschland keine echte Lobby. Es ist höchste Zeit, gegen den Gleichheitswahn aufzustehen.
[Update 29 September 2013] Spurred by a horrendous case of child murder, Britain is
moving to further restrict access to Internet porn. As written, the proposal is measured and reasonable: a default filter on such material,
which is however defeasible at
individual request. But remember
Hardin’s law: “You can never do
just one thing.” Thus consider:
“They wanted to block extreme
pornography, and I said nothing, then they wanted to block material that
infringed on copyrights, and I said nothing, and then they started to block Web
sites with extreme messages that didn’t quite agree with the government line,
and I still said nothing,” said Alex Bloor, business development manager at
Andrews & Arnold, a British Internet service provider popular with computer
savvy subscribers. “This is the thin end of a massive wedge.”
They cite the recent case of a man
who was denied access to an online version of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” due to its
“violent content” while doing research at London’s British Library.
~
Now here's a lady you can look u-u-u-UP ...
and down... and not go to prison, neither!
Guaranteed of age!
~
[Update 1 Oct 2013] Minor British doings like that seldom get much coverage on this side of the pond, but the current New Yorker has a nice Talk-of-the-Town by Lauren Collins:
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2013/10/07/131007ta_talk_collins
[Update 15 Oct 2014] Too hot to handle; just links:
www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-john-grisham-troubling-statements-about-child-porn-20141016-story.html#navtype=outfit
www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/10/16/in-defense-of-john-grisham/
[Update 21 April 2016]
For other images that Germans in particular are forbidden to behold, try
this:
Update 9 Dec 2016] And now this:
Foes of Russia Say Child
Pornography Is Planted to Ruin Them
CAMBRIDGE, England — His indomitable
will steeled by a dozen years in the Soviet gulag, decades of sparring with the
K.G.B. and a bout of near fatal heart disease, Vladimir K. Bukovsky, a tireless
opponent of Soviet leaders and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, is not a
man easily put off his stride.
But he got knocked sideways when
British police officers banged on the front door of his home on a sedate
suburban street here early one morning while he lay sick in bed and informed
him that they had “received information about forbidden images” in his possession.
“It was all very bizarre and
disturbing,” Mr. Bukovsky said. “This is not normally the language of a free
society,” he added, recalling how his old K.G.B. tormentors used to hound him
and his friends over texts and photographs declared forbidden by the Soviet
authorities.
Here Russia simply hands the petard to the West, which
hoists with it.
Being the lazy person that I am, I let my computer translate for me. Forthwith:
ReplyDeleteAnd do not be fooled by restriction did to "hard" naughtinesses: ephebophilophobic in this age, did qualification is quite Broadly interpreted in a way did Caused previous centuries would have to gape. For instance, viewing this painting, from almost two centuries ago, could soon country you in prison:
Komisch, nein/
Given that I earn my bread translating things, that is good to hear!
DeleteAnother argument for learning German:
http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/08/christian-morgenstern-zum-gedachtnis.html