The French Constitutional Council has approved a law that criminalizes the filming or broadcasting of acts of violence by people other than professional journalists. The law could lead to the imprisonment of eyewitnesses who film acts of police violence, or operators of Web sites publishing the images, one French civil liberties group warned on Tuesday.
The council chose an unfortunate anniversary to publish its decision approving the law, which came exactly 16 years after Los Angeles police officers beating Rodney King were filmed by amateur videographer George Holliday on the night of March 3, 1991. The officers’ acquittal at the end on April 29, 1992 sparked riots in Los Angeles.
If Holliday were to film a similar scene of violence in France today, he could end up in prison as a result of the new law, said Pascal Cohet, a spokesman for French online civil liberties group Odebi. And anyone publishing such images could face up to five years in prison and a fine of €75,000 (US $98,537), potentially a harsher sentence than that for committing the violent act.
What total stupidity!
Such censorship is not unlike the criminalization of political dissent.
It will hide things like the State underreporting violence, and even allow the State to bully dissenters into admitting to crimes they never committed without being reported.
Very few people know that Ottawa tried to bribe political dissenters at the 2001 Quebec City free trade demonstration. Dissenters were offered $150-250 to admit guilt to trumped up charges which they never committed.
In BC, the courts sentenced an environmental protestor in ill health to 30 days in a prison. Within a month of her release she died, and it is the direct result of her imprisonment. BC authorities deny this.
Indeed, the Premier and his henchmen demonized the protestors who disrupted the Olympic Clock announcement back in March.
As well, the VPD attempted to incite a riot among the protestors.
That's not democracy; that's mob rule.
Showing posts with label political dissent. Show all posts
Showing posts with label political dissent. Show all posts
20070503
Poverty As Social Protest
I am a person with disabilities as social protest.
For this is the closest in the post-modern world that I can get to becoming a sadhu in Western society.
Yet this will not get me committed except to a worthy cause. It is also unworthy of me to have normal desires and passion.
It is against my rights to force me to work a 40 hour week just to obtain taxes from me to oppress the homeless and the mentally ill.
By not forming a Mental Health Commission and a Homeless Commission, the Canadian government is thus oppressing the homeless and the mentally ill.
The only way I will support my poverty is through volunteerism and minimal part-time work.
***This entry will be edited over the next week as I add to it.
For this is the closest in the post-modern world that I can get to becoming a sadhu in Western society.
Yet this will not get me committed except to a worthy cause. It is also unworthy of me to have normal desires and passion.
It is against my rights to force me to work a 40 hour week just to obtain taxes from me to oppress the homeless and the mentally ill.
By not forming a Mental Health Commission and a Homeless Commission, the Canadian government is thus oppressing the homeless and the mentally ill.
The only way I will support my poverty is through volunteerism and minimal part-time work.
***This entry will be edited over the next week as I add to it.
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