Tagged: Christchurch shooting

Droit 41 Quand règne l’arbitraire

Mars-Juin 2024 FR-EN

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FR

Quand règne l’arbitraire

La distinction entre (1) brocarder les adeptes d’une religion et (2) brocarder une religion n’a strictement aucun sens. La loi française n’a aucun sens et les jugements sur ces questions sont arbitraires.

Rappel (éléments publiés sur ce blog le 15/2/2020 Twit28) : « Il est possible de critiquer fermement, même avec des propos très virulents ou injurieux, une religion, alors que les croyants sont protégés par les infractions listées. » (Note juridique de 2016 publiée sur le site internet du Sénat) Prenons un exemple. « Le babisme est une religion imbécile » : est-ce licite ? Le propos se borne à critiquer une religion, même avec des propos injurieux. « Le babisme est une religion d’imbéciles » : est-ce illicite ? Il est nommément question des croyants. Cette interprétation reprise par le Sénat est évidemment fautive car elle rend impossible « la protection des croyants » par la loi qui vise à les protéger. Mon exemple le montre pleinement : de deux propos strictement équivalents en termes de virulence injurieuse, l’un serait condamné, l’autre non. Tracer une frontière entre les deux types de propos ne peut être qu’arbitraire. De deux choses l’une : ou bien vous supprimez ces lois (parce qu’elles sont liberticides) ou bien vous les appliquez. Car les interpréter de manière sournoise, équivoque et arbitraire, tue le droit. Or cette interprétation reprise par le Sénat, qui empêche de protéger les croyants (puisqu’un simple ajustement verbal sans aucune conséquence sémantique permettrait d’échapper à toutes sanctions pénales), est, dans le contexte actuel, un moyen de soustraire l’islamophobie à l’application de la loi.

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Faux-cols et « Apologie du terrorisme »

L’approbation simple du terrorisme est légale en France (cf. l’article du 27 octobre 2023  « Jean-Luc Mélenchon se trompe sur l’apologie du terrorisme » sur le site Actu juridique). L’apologie est interdite et passible de cinq ans de prison. Applaudir dix secondes : approbation licite. Applaudir onze secondes : apologie, cinq ans de prison. Voilà. Une distinction là encore bien arbitraire pour faire croire que nos lois respectent les libertés.

Sur la question du Proche-Orient, Mathilde Panot sera condamnée, après le syndicaliste Jean-Paul Delescaut, à de la prison avec sursis. Si elle s’exprime de nouveau sur le sujet, elle sera condamnée à de la prison ferme, comme récidiviste. Elle ne parlera donc plus que des CROUS… Et l’autre, disant : « Si le jugement n’est pas une condamnation, vous pourrez vous en prévaloir. » C’est un service qu’on leur rend, en fait, ah là là.

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Si quelque chose est « peut-être » de l’apologie du terrorisme, c’est que l’affaire doit être close. La loi pénale (c’est un principe fondamental) doit être claire : il ne doit pas y avoir de doute, par conséquent, sur le fait que des agissements sont illicites. Dans une affaire pénale en général, la question est de savoir si telle ou telle personne a fait ou n’a pas fait ce qu’on lui reproche. Ici, la question est de savoir si ce qu’ont dit telle et telle personne est ou n’est pas un délit. Ce n’est pas comme ça que le droit fonctionne ! Or, avec les délits d’opinion, c’est comme cela, et c’est justement pour cette raison que les délits d’opinion ne sont pas acceptables en droit, ce qui veut dire : pas de lois contre l’expression d’idées, quelles qu’elles soient. La classe politique française a méconnu et méconnaît ce principe, tout en prétendant le défendre. Mais dès que ces politiciens s’expriment sur le sujet, ils disent, forcément, des monstruosités juridiques, du type : « C’est peut-être de l’apologie du terrorisme : à la justice de trancher. » Non, les citoyens d’un État de droit n’ont pas à se demander si ce qu’ils disent est « peut-être » un délit pour duchmol ou tartempion pouvant saisir le juge.

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« ’On a été bien reçus’, dit [la militante pro-palestinienne] Rima Hassan à la sortie des locaux de la police judiciaire [où elle était entendue pour des faits d’apologie du terrorisme en raison de propos tenus après le 7 octobre]. (AFP)

Pourquoi faire un titre sur « J’ai été bien reçue » ? Le journaliste pensait-il qu’elle serait torturée, en raison des condamnations de la France par la Cour européenne des droits de l’homme pour tortures policières ? Ou bien est-il hors sujet ? Le journaliste de l’AFP qui a fait ce titre doit être la seule personne en France à penser que le sujet est celui de l’accueil des personnes par la police…

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Les plaintes fantaisistes ne doivent pas être reçues. C’est cela, la procédure.

Est-ce la même organisation qui a déposé plainte contre plus de 600 militants et acteurs politiques français au lendemain du 7 octobre ? Quel est le financement de cette organisation ? Comment ce phénomène de plaintes de masse n’est-il pas un abus de procédure et du spam juridictionnel ? La justice dit qu’elle est surchargée mais elle accepte 650 plaintes en masse de la part d’une seule entité ? Et ce sous le gouvernement qui a répondu par une circulaire illégale de déni après l’arrêt Baldassi de la Cour européenne des droits de l’homme sur le droit au boycott de l’État sioniste.

On me dit qu’une association a déposé plus de 600 plaintes pour apologie du terrorisme. C’est une attaque DoS contre la justice française. Que les pouvoirs publics réagissent !

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Peut-on rire de tout, Guillaume Meurice ?

Classement sans suite concernant les propos de l’humoriste Guillaume Meurice sur le Premier ministre israélien : « un nazi mais sans prépuce ».

Un classement sans suite, ce n’est pas « la justice a dit que… », comme on a pu l’entendre. Le procureur qui classe sans suite n’est pas, la Cour européenne des droits de l’homme l’a rappelé à plusieurs reprises, une autorité judiciaire mais une autorité administrative, comme la police. Le plaignant qui voudrait insister pour faire aboutir sa plainte et obtenir un jugement le pourrait. En l’occurrence, le procureur a estimé que la plainte était sans fondement et n’avait aucune chance d’aboutir à une condamnation.

Or, quand on voit que les quelques centaines de plaintes (par une même organisation, semble-t-il) pour apologie de terrorisme ne sont pas classées sans suite, alors même que « l’approbation simple » du terrorisme est légale en France (cf. l’article du 27 octobre 2023 « Jean-Luc Mélenchon se trompe sur l’apologie du terrorisme » sur le site Actu juridique), que l’apologie illicite est quelque chose de complètement distinct en principe et en droit de l’approbation (qui relève de l’opinion), on a bien du mal à comprendre, et ces difficultés sont évidemment elles-mêmes une façon de geler le débat. Puisque les plaintes contre Rima Hassan, Mathilde Panot et bien d’autres ne sont pas classées sans suite, tout le monde aurait pu s’attendre à ce que Meurice passât lui aussi devant un tribunal. Mais personne ne sait à quoi s’attendre et c’est bien le problème de ces lois que l’on voudrait entendre dénoncer par nos partis politiques mais qui restent en dehors de toute discussion. Nos politiciens sont tous contre la censure mais personne ne pointe du doigt les lois de censure.

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Les lois scélérates se portent bien, merci

Les « lois scélérates » françaises servent à nuire à l’opposition au gouvernement, comme le rappelle l’avocate Elsa Marcel. Ces lois existent depuis plus d’un siècle. Pourquoi dire – on l’entend beaucoup – que la France devient tout à coup fasciste ? Ces lois existaient même avant le fascisme.

Léon Blum fait partie des quelques noms qu’on cite de gens qui se sont opposés aux lois scélérates. Quand il a dirigé le Front Populaire, qu’a fait Léon Blum contre les lois scélérates ? Rien. Lui savoir gré de son opposition aux lois scélérates est donc de la niaiserie chez les uns, de l’escroquerie intellectuelle chez les autres.

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Statistiques ethniques

Si la réponse pénale au racisme consiste à prononcer des rappels à la loi pour les injures contre telle minorité et des peines de prison pour les injures contre telle autre, c’est du racisme. Montrez-nous donc les statistiques. Comment ça « il n’y en a pas » ?!

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Pourquoi les gens vont-ils voter ? On leur propose des programmes électoraux, puis, après les élections, les partis entrent dans des négociations à huis clos d’où sort un pacte de coalition sur lequel aucun électeur n’a voté. Ce type de pacte peut hypothétiquement conduire au pouvoir un parti qui renonce à tous les points de son programme électoral.

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Les Pays-Bas ont des lois criminalisant les discours haineux envers des groupes, notamment à raison de leur religion (article 137 du code pénal†), mais Geert Wilders, condamné une fois pour des propos qu’il répète continuellement, ce qui devrait lui valoir de faire de la prison comme multirécidiviste, va diriger le pays. On a rarement vu une telle gangrène de l’État de droit. Les institutions corrompues de ce pays s’assoient sur leurs lois quand les victimes sont les musulmans. La trajectoire de l’individu en question n’est possible que par cette gangrène.

Les institutions ont un devoir constitutionnel qui est de garantir le fonctionnement de l’État de droit (the rule of law), et quand elles sont défaillantes sur ce point on peut et doit parler de gangrène d’un système.

† « He who publicly, orally, in writing or graphically, intentionally expresses himself insultingly regarding a group of people because of their race, their religion or their life philosophy, their heterosexual or homosexual orientation or their physical, psychological or mental disability, shall be punished by imprisonment of no more than a year » (Art. 137c traduit en anglais)

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Comment être légalement polygame en France

La polygamie est passible d’un an de prison en France (article 433-20 du code pénal). Seulement, les mariages religieux ou coutumiers n’y étant pas reconnus, certaines personnes polygames ne sont pas considérées comme polygames par la loi.

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La sueur du chien

L’argument de Manon Aubry sur le nombre comparé d’amendements déposés par elle et par Jordan Bardella au Parlement européen n’est ni percutant ni pertinent, parce que ce nombre n’est pas important, la vraie question étant : pour quel résultat ? Si la réponse est la même pour celui qui a déposé des milliers d’amendements et celui qui en a déposé trois – par exemple que cela n’a eu aucun résultat ni dans un cas ni dans l’autre –, le bilan est en faveur du second. Des dépôts compulsifs d’amendements sans résultats sont une étrange conception de la politique.

La « productivité » d’un député ne se mesure pas au nombre d’amendements déposés mais au nombre d’amendements retenus, et cela ne dépend pas du nombre déposé. Un amendement déposé sans résultat a un impact négatif sur la productivité du député. Si l’on nous répond que la productivité d’un député se mesure à son temps de parole plutôt qu’au résultat de ses prises de parole, je réponds, surtout au Parlement européen, encore plus éloigné du public qu’un Parlement national, que ces débats ont un côté « entre soi » inutile et même irritant pour le public : les députés sont des politiciens professionnels et un professionnel de la politique ne se laisse pas convaincre par les arguments d’un adversaire politique, il est justement payé pour ne pas se laisser convaincre. En vérité, un député sert mieux son parti en dehors du Parlement qu’au dedans, en optant pour une stratégie locale et nationale de communication. Qu’un député pense se former en politique en étant assidu au travail parlementaire, c’est son droit, mais qu’il présente cette formation individuelle comme une nécessité du travail productif, c’est faux. De sorte que, non, les 7.780 euros nets de rémunération mensuelle d’un député européen ne se justifient pas, mais dire que parce qu’on est payé ce montant élevé on doit déposer des quantités d’amendements qui resteront sans résultat, c’est de la niaiserie. Comme dit un proverbe sessouto, « la sueur du chien ne fait que mouiller ses poils » (tiré de l’Anthologie n*gre – je ne peux écrire le mot, sous peine de disparaître d’internet – par Blaise Cendrars).

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Présomption d’innocence
et Garantie du mobile haineux du crime

« Antisémitisme : une jeune fille de 12 ans violée par des adolescents à Courbevoie. » (Europe 1, 19 juin 2024)

Qu’une victime appartienne à telle ou telle minorité ne suffit pas pour que l’infraction soit motivée par la haine. Sauf erreur, Europe 1 ne dit rien, dans cette vidéo, des raisons qui font que la police retient un caractère aggravant pour l’infraction, comme si l’appartenance de la victime à telle ou telle minorité était en soi une raison suffisante pour une telle aggravation. Ce qui est de nature à déformer la compréhension du droit par le public.

N’est-il pas regrettable qu’un média qui titre une vidéo « Antisémitisme : une jeune fille etc. » ne dise pas en quoi il s’agit d’antisémitisme, ce qui, je le répète, laisse penser que l’appartenance d’une victime à telle ou telle communauté est suffisante en droit pour que le caractère aggravant d’une infraction soit retenu, ce qui n’est évidemment pas le cas ?

Les gens sont présumés innocents jusqu’à leur condamnation par un tribunal indépendant mais le mobile haineux est garanti sans attendre, au terme d’une enquête sommaire des services de l’exécutif, pour nos médias et notre classe politique.

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Le procès

Adrien Quatennens n’a pas eu droit à un procès serein, impartial. C’était un procès devant l’opinion, un lynchage. Adrien Quatennens n’a même pas pu présenter la moindre défense car ç’aurait été « justifier l’injustifiable » devant l’opinion manipulée et il aurait aggravé son cas devant cette foule qui demandait sa tête et qui a été en réalité son seul juge dans cette affaire. Or, en droit, donner une gifle à quelqu’un qui vous couvre d’injures blessantes et humiliantes par ses paroles ou sa conduite n’est pas la même chose que donner une gifle à quelqu’un qui se montre respectueux envers vous, et la défense avait donc le droit de poser la question de l’attitude de la femme d’Adrien Quatennens, ce qui évidemment n’a jamais été ne serait-ce que suggéré devant l’opinion, bien excitée par les partis politiques et même des membres du gouvernement, et qui a tout préjugé jusqu’au (pré)jugement final. Or, comme personne, dans la classe politique, y compris parmi les « amis » de Quatennens, n’a jamais, que je sache, rappelé le moins du monde ces évidences ainsi que les principes du droit, il est impossible qu’une telle classe politique soit capable de produire de bonnes lois.

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Abortion and the Principle
“No Taxation Without Representation”

[Senatrix] Mazie Hirono: ‘If You Don’t Support Abortion, Don’t Get One; Leave The Rest Of Us Alone’” (Forbes Breaking News)

Why should I pay for others’ abortions? Leave the taxpayer alone! This “leave women alone” argument is deceptive and insulting, everywhere taxpayers support the costs. This senatrix is a deceptive woman. You milk the taxpayer and then: “It’s none of your business.” It isn’t even sure she knows the situation, she seems so clueless. The idea is plain wrong in a system where the least bit of health expenses is the least bit socialized, because then the issue is that of a taxation and, as all Americans except this Democratic woman know, from the beginning of the Republic the principle has been “No taxation without representation.

The mistakes I have a right to point are those whose consequences fall upon me in one way or another, which is the case with abortion where health expenses are socialized. Through socialization the issue becomes that of a taxation and the principle is “no taxation without representation.” Rape is the only case where an abortion would not be the result of a mistake, as sex is forced on the woman by her rapist. For that reason, several legislations around the world prohibit abortion except in case of rape. On this particular point, I would like to ask data from said legislations. If rape is made an exception, women who want to abort may falsely claim having been raped and accuse innocent men.

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“A Scotsman’s home will no longer be his castle.” (George Galloway MP) [reacting on a new bill further stifling Scotsmen’s speech]

The model is France, where private speech has always been punishable, only the punishment is not as severe as for public speech, namely you can go to jail for public speech, not for private speech.

I am not quite sure this law is as much a change as its opponents believe or make believe it is, that is, I am not sure Scotland goes from free to unfree. I should think it is a small increment in speech repression. A few years ago, a new bill was passed in Canada, opponents claimed Canada was becoming a repressive state, but the truth is the bill’s authors were right: It was not a big change, the repression apparatus had already been there for decades. If you defend free speech, you should not simply oppose the newest of many repressive bills but call for the total abolition of the existing repression apparatus.

If the law criminalizes private speech where only public speech was criminalized before, and if this and this only is the problem, then I might think you don’t really care about free speech, for in fact it is not as much a problem to criminalize private speech as to criminalize public speech. Is a Scotsman’s speech for the walls of his castle and a few people there, or does the Scotsman legitimately want to be heard beyond his castle’s walls? If he may legitimately want to he heard, then repression of private speech where only public speech was repressed before is not as heinous a legislative deed as repression of public speech where public speech was free.

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Australia can legally prevent Australian users from watching content, not users from other countries, who have no say on Australian laws, have not elected these people to make laws in their name. Therefore, any injunction on X (formerly Twitter) by Australian authorities to ban content for all X users is illegal power grab. X can only be, by Australia, compelled to deny content access for users connecting from Australia.

At this stage, Australia’s request is an administrative gag order, by the way; the Australian authorities are not even asking for a judicial decision.

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One is reminded of Christchurch, NZ. “New Zealand man jailed for 21 months for sharing Christchurch shooting video” (BBC News, June 2019). Making it a crime to share the video amounted to claiming that the government must be the only source of truth. The only source of truth will be at the same time the agency that restricts access to evidence. Under a constitutional regime the government can make no claim to be an exclusive authority as to what the truth is. Hence, by restricting access to evidence it overrides its constitutional function. – To the best of my knowledge, the Christchurch video was de-platformed from all internet platforms, including Twitter, now X. They complied with a NZ gag order, apparently. Therefore, I don’t know how this NZ man could even share this material if not through private emails or mails…

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Feel Good Bills

“Yet again today we had another show vote to make people [representatives] feel good about themselves by passing a bill having the word antisemitism in the title.” (U.S. Representative Chip Roy)

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Pacta Sunt Servanda
vs The Unbreakable Bond

An “unbreakable bond” is something that cannot exist between two sovereign states, given the pacta sunt servanda principle of international relationships. A statesman talking of an unbreakable bond with a foreign state talks as if he had got a mandate from this foreign state’s rather than his own state’s constituency. This is a misuse of power plain and simple, basically the rhetoric of high treason. The strange thing is that it has been every single U.S. statesman’s talk these last decades.

The “unbreakable bond” rhetoric should be left to soapbox, electoral campaign speech, if people are dumb enough to listen to such nonsense. On the institutional level it is treasonous. Sovereign states have contractual bonds: A breach of contract by one unbinds the other. A U.S. statesman cannot talk of an unbreakable bond because in case of breach of contract by the other state it will be his duty to unbind the U.S., and he is not ruling the other state but his own state so, with the constitutional powers vested on him, he cannot prevent a breach by a foreign sovereign state, his constitutional powers do not extend over two states. Talking of an unbreakable bond with a foreign state is the same as saying that under his tenure crimes will not be punished: A statesman has no right, as a constitutional power, to say such a thing.

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Religion As Private Matter:
A False Tenet of Secularism

If a country is a democracy where people vote, then the obvious result must be that the majority’s religion will have some official character, not because freedom of religion is stifled but because people vote and their vote is informed by their religion. What is a religion that does not inform one’s vote? People vote for policies, policies are based on values as these values translate in how the society works. How can it be said that religion is a merely private matter? Values are not private matters. The very fact that the U.S. is not a “Christian nationalist” country is proof that the leading forces of this country are hostile either to religion as such or to the majority’s religion, and in this hostility is included the notion that religion (or the majority’s religion) is a merely private matter, which is an emasculation of religious faith. I don’t know what you think the ballot is for but you can’t claim that people should not see it as a way to translate their religious values into policies. People vote for what they want, in theory; if they can’t, this is a flawed democracy.

Addendum. “People vote for what they want.” To be precise, they cannot vote for unconstitutional bills, that is, unconstitutional bills are not binding, not enforceable before courts of law. However, constitutional amendments can be passed (the theory of “rigid constitutions” is clearly undemocratic).

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Same as the state can discourage the consumption of drugs by criminalizing it, the state can criminalize other conducts the majority of the people, informed by their religion, deem sinful and want to discourage.

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The Scam of Therapeutic Cannabis

“Therapeutic psychedelics” is a contradiction in terms as therapeutics aims at floating individuals on mundane performance whereas psychedelics opens them to extramundane experience. U.S. Congress’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) of 1993 was a sounder approach to the question.

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A medical use of cannabis was contrived as a wedge for recreational use. At Woodstock, no one said a word about medical use but they had a lot to say about recreational or existential or philosophical use. Medical use was contrived by people who had smoked weed at Woodstock and were looking for a way to make their new pastime accepted by society. That is, they perjure the Hippocratic Oath.

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Commercium liberum, free trade means that if China doesn’t buy British opium from British India, the English will attack China and with their military power open Chinese harbors to opium imports. This is called Opium War and it is real. Free trade is a völkerrechtlich (international-law) justa causa of aggression. Recently, Singapore wanted to ban chewing gum from its territory; the U.S. objected, therefore Singapore keeps importing “therapeutical” chewing gum, and this is how everything can be therapeutic if need be. As the states are on a cannabis legalizing spree, prepare for the Cannabis Wars of tomorrow.

Cannabis Wars will be American aggressions against countries that oppose flooding by medical and/or recreational cannabis, this opposition being an impediment to free trade. Hong Kong’s colonial status was a result of the Opium Wars, so it cannot be said that these “free trade” wars are not for territorial gains. They are 1/ aggression wars, 2/ possibly ending in territorial changes, and above all they are 3/ just wars, having justa causa.

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According to the French Constitution, Art. 35, 1) A declaration of war by the government must be authorized by Parliament. 2) Parliament must be informed of military interventions in foreign countries. 3) If a military intervention lasts more than four months, its continuation must be authorized by Parliament. Hence, the French Constitution organizes the modalities of military intervention without declaration of war. What a piece of trash.

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That countries with the nuclear weapon oppose that countries without the nuclear weapon acquire it, is old jungle rule. All countries have a right to develop nuclear armament as soon and as long as some countries possess such a weapon. This is a natural right of states.

Law 12: The Lunar Breeze Effect Flag

The Lunar Breeze Effect Flag

For full understanding of the following, read section The Latest on Wikipedia’s Moon Landing Hoax Debunking in Law 10.

“Neil, it’s cool you went on the Moon but… a good artistic picture is what matters.”

“One that ties the room together.”

So you take the French Wikipedia version for granted. Yet the English Wikipedia version is different: “The flag was rippled because it had been folded during storage – the ripples could be mistaken for movement in a still photo.” Here there is no word about an intention to tie the room together, the ripples are accidental, they are folds due to storage which turn out to make the flag look as if it were fluttering in the wind.

As if the authors of the English Wikipedia page dared not confess what my interlocutor endorses wholeheartedly. As if, namely, they doubted it was judicious to fake a flag fluttering in the wind in a picture shot on the moon. As if they dared not confess it because of the issue involved in taking people for idiots.

NASA Picture With Lunar Breeze Effect Flag
Chinese Flag Without Breeze Effect (Source: BBC Dec 4, 2020 “China becomes second nation to plant flag on the Moon”)

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Crack Hills Have Eyes 2

See Law 11.

Politicians make laws (lawmaker=the legislative power) and they also enforce laws as executive power (from which police take their orders). What my post denounced about Crack Hill is that politicians qua executive power do not enforce the law politicians vote qua legislative power. That is, as taking crack is a criminal offence, politicians qua executive are taking a very light view of the law when they enforce it by distributing pipes and paying hotel rooms to criminals. If this is their idea of the issue, then they must take the initiative of a legislative debate to repeal the law and decriminalize crack consumption, and stop telling people they enforce the law by ignoring it. This is a huge problem, because when executive officials do not want to enforce the law, they don’t bother to have it repealed, they just instruct the services, the admnistration (police etc.) to ignore it, or to do as they please. A crackhead in France may live in a free hotel room with new pipes every Thursday or behind bars, it all depends on the police’s mood. This is not the rule of law.

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Government protectionism of the black market.

Yes, government and police protectionism of the black market, since without police forces the government could do nothing, so the police are always responsible (if only by abiding) whereas one may imagine cases where only police are responsible while the executive authorities know nothing of what is going on.

Now, as my interlocutor compared enforcement of Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act (Prohibition) with the contemporary war on drugs, let me add the following. The same politicians who in France are implementing the brilliant crack plan I have just been talking of, eschewing enforcement of national drug laws, are eager to point at the figures of prison inmates in the U.S. (highest rate of prison inmates per inhabitant in the world, so they say) as a reason why they ought not to follow the same path. In several other, perhaps most European countries, the same discourse can be heard. But these fellows dare not repeal their own national drug laws, and the result of this slighting of the law is that these countries are not rule of law countries anymore. The prison population figure is the price the United States is paying for upholding the rule of law. God Bless America for that. In Europe they are leaving everything at the discretion of the bureaucracy. Whether one will be punished for consuming drugs depends not on the law (which still says they must be punished) but on how they were perceived at some point by some person in the bureaucracy, some cop, who will have them prosecuted in spite of the unwritten rule of bureaucracy saying that those poor devils should be left alone.

The poor devil who did not please the cop will be prosecuted, a judge will hear him and, say we are in France, a country of written law, the judge, although he has heard of the bureaucratic rule, will open the legal code at the page where the article laying down the penalties for consuming drugs lies, and he will condemn the poor devil. (Compared to the functionarial nonentity that a French judge is, American judges are intellectuals.)

This is what European politicians are so proud of – the fact that no one knows what to expect. They revel in a world of arbitrariness.

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Biden supports suppressing online “misinformation,” press secretary says.

Was it on his electoral platform or does he just add it now as an extra?

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Justin Trudeau dismisses critics of internet censorship bill as “tin foil hats.”

The same person explained that derogatory speech is the same as shouting fire in a crowded theater – the classic example in SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States) case law that would serve to send his bill to the garbage can.

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Lying

“Free speech” lawyer argues “lying” should be an impeachable offense.

The levels of nincompoopery in academia (“law professor at George Washington University”) are staggering. To think that these people are comfortable talking about truth and lies as they do… They really have got no clue. Let me take an example. Husband and wife want to divorce because it turns out they don’t see things the same way. One issue to settle is who will keep the children. Why is it an issue? Because husband and wife both want to raise the kids according to his or her own views and ideas, according to how he or she sees things. Will you ask a law professor at George Washington University to tell the judge whose ideas are truths and whose are untruths, calling the latter lies, before taking a decision? Nonsense. If an amicus curiae talked like that (within an acceptable margin in the frame of the society – as expressing some ideas, like belief in witchcraft or alien abductions, would probably be detrimental in the case to the party expressing these ideas) he would be dismissed at once, as trying to impose his or her own set of preconceived ideas.

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What I wrote may sound confusing, at least for two kinds of people in America. Some will remember that experts in American courts are experts of the parties, who try to sustain their party’s position, whereas I seem to be talking of experts of the courts, which exist in civil law (as opposed to common law) countries, experts who had rather remain as neutral as possible in order not to fall into disrepute.

Others will remember that in America jury trial is the rule in civil trials and I seem to omit the fact completely. In fact, divorce trials by jury are rare even in the U.S.: « Only a few states allow for any type of jury trial in a divorce case.  Even then, those states limit the issues that can go before a jury. For example, Texas, which has the most liberal rules concerning jury trials in divorce cases, is the only state that allows juries to decide which parent gets custody of the children and where the children will live. » (rightlawyers.com) Unless most divorces occur in Texas, the majority of divorced American parents must abide by a decision on who is to keep the children which was not taken by a jury.

Still, if an expert smugly told the judge, like some professor of George Washington University, that the kids cannot be in custody of the father, for instance, because the father voted for Trump and Trump is a liar so you cannot rely on such a one to take care of kids, she would be laughed at or I do not know my judge. Yet she writes books like that, which tells you what a tyrant she must be in her classroom, even if people shrug shoulders at her in most other circumstances.

Now, judges are probably more of an official’s profile than the majority of people, so the fact that divorce trials are not decided by juries is also more likely to be detrimental to parents who hold certain ideas, even not so fringe as belief in alien abductions. I should think a parent known to be a Gab user, for instance, is likely to lose his kids in a divorce court when a divorce is filed. Prove me wrong.

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UK government accused of promoting a “nanny state” with proposed online ban on high calorie food ads.

Is commercial speech speech or rather the polluting of speech? Commercial speech wasn’t protected in the US before the 1970s (Virginia State Pharmacy Board v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, 1976). This is the kind of view that makes authoritarian regimes comfortable with their speech suppression systems, as they can say to their people: See, we’re protecting you and your free thinking from the relentless, nauseating pushing by unthinking business whose sole aim is profit. In any case, while the US Supreme Court has found that commercial speech is speech, it does not grant it the same level of protection as non-commercial speech, so the UK policy here described could be implemented in the states too within the law.

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Bonkers About Lèse-Majesté

Prince Harry complains about online “misinformation” calls First Amendment “bonkers.”

Prince Harry: “I’ve got so much I want to say about the First Amendment; I still don’t understand it, but it is bonkers.” No surprise: “In 2013, the Ministry of Justice admitted that the Treason Felony Act 1848 had accidentally been ditched. The 165-year-old law threatens anyone calling for the abolition of the monarchy with life imprisonment.” (The Sun, Oct 20, 2016)

Information about lese-majeste legislation in UK is deceptive: As the headline from The Sun shows, they make all sorts of claims, so much so that nobody can know what the legal situation is. (Call that the rule of law?) On Wikipedia page Lèse-majesté, for UK they write: “The Treason Felony Act of 1848 makes it an offence to advocate for the abolition of the monarchy. Such advocation is punishable by up to life imprisonment under the Act. Though still in the statute book, the law is no longer enforced.” Yet the source for that is a Dec 2013 paper by The Guardian, “Calling for abolition of monarchy is still illegal, UK justice ministry admits,” with subtitle “Department wrongly announced that section of law threatening people with life imprisonment had been repealed.” The government spreads misinformation on the issue. That the law be no longer enforced does not mean it will not be enforced in case someone violates it; only, without proof to the contrary, that nobody dares speak freely on the issue! Except, probably, ‘accredited’ cartoonists trained in the art of sycophancy under the guise of joking, i.e., court jesters.

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As Harry has in his native country a history of blundering (google “Harry the Nazi”), it is relevant to stress that his calling American First Amendment “bonkers” is not one more blunder according to British royalty’s etiquette but on the contrary full compliance with it. The extraordinary sequence of the British government claiming lese-majeste laws void and then retracting, claiming to have repealed them and then denying, is the (one may say comical) confirmation that, deep within, these people see no wrong in punishing speech with life imprisonment. The appalling statute, worse than the classic example of Thai monarchy (where offensive speech about the King is punishable with a maximum of 15 years’ imprisonment, compared to 3 years for the Sultan of Brunei) and whose status is at best uncertain, that is, of which nobody can say it is no longer part of British law because British lawmakers won’t make such a declaration without denying it at once, is among other things what shapes Prince Harry’s animus.

Now, that “Department wrongly announced” the repeal of the lese-majeste law is big lese-majeste, if you ask me, and should be punished with hanging. Because if they have not hanged people there for a while it must be due to some misunderstanding.

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None of Your Business

The US will join the “Christchurch Call” to eliminate extremist content online. (May 2021)

“New Zealand man jailed for 21 months for sharing Christchurch shooting video” (BBC News, June 2019). Making it a crime to share this video amounts to claiming that the government must be the only source of truth. The only source of truth will be at the same time the agency that restricts access to evidence. Under a constitutional regime the government can make no claim to be an exclusive authority as to what the truth is. Hence, by restricting access to evidence it overrides its constitutional function and mocks constitutional liberties.

Here is how the government proceeds. You learn what happened in Christchurch and then the government tells you that, given what happened in Christchurch, they are going to carry out a set of policies that will curtail your fundamental liberties for the sake of peace and order. Then, when a citizen says, “Let’s see what happened in Christchurch” and makes the video of the shooting available online, he’s punished with 21 months imprisonment for inciting violence (or whatever fallacy they used). Thus, what happened in Christchurch is none of your business even though based on this event you are going to lose greatly in terms of freedom, or more simply you are going to lose your freedom. – What happened in Christchurch is the government’s business and you have no right to ask for evidence. “The only source of truth will be at the same time the agency that restricts access to evidence.”

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An Axiom

Independent judges versus employees of the king. In the common law tradition, judges are fully independent. In the civil law tradition, judges are no more than employees of the king. They are strictly monitored by higher courts, which are in turn monitored in a remarkable extent by the central government.” (Gerrit De Geest, American Law: A Comparative Primer, 2020)

It should be stressed that this describes, as far as the civil law tradition is concerned, police states, because the state is entirely absorbed in the government. The axiom is therefore that civil law countries are police states.

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“the French, with their centuries-long tradition of presenting case law as pure interpretations of codified law.” (De Geest, 2020, p. 64)

Granting it is true of the judicial judge, it is not so with the administrative judge, which has originated much of the administrative law in France, whole parts of which are judge-made (« droit d’origine jurisprudentielle »). – The political cartel is fond of leaving to the judge all lawmaking that crushes individuals under the boot of the police state.

De Geest is excusable, however, from a common law viewpoint, for overlooking that the administrative judge is a judge at all: “Believe it or not, the Conseil d’État, that is, the French supreme court for administrative law, belongs to the executive branch, not the judicial branch!” p. 86) It’s not about believing and joking but about what common law countries do to bring police states to reason.

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“A plea bargain in a criminal case is the equivalent of a settlement in a civil case.” (Gerrit De Geest, American Law: A Comparative Primer, 2020, p. 70)

No. Plea bargaining is a modality of prosecution, not its eschewing. It has nothing to do with the debate on compulsory prosecution vs. principle of opportunity, and by the way De Geest wrongly associates compulsory prosecution with the civil law tradition; in major civil law countries such as France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, the principle of opportunity obtains.