Anonymous, the loosely-organized group that’s behind a number of Internet hack attacks in support of causes they support, is taking on the “God Hates Fags” Westboro Baptist Church. I don’t have a horse in this race, but Anonymous’ declaration of war and Fred Phelps’ response are the kinds of smack talk that crack me up. Samples:
We, the collective super-consciousness known as ANONYMOUS – the Voice of Free Speech & the Advocate of the People – have long heard you issue your venomous statements of hatred, and we have witnessed your flagrant and absurd displays of inimitable bigotry and intolerant fanaticism. We have always regarded you and your ilk as an assembly of graceless sociopaths and maniacal chauvinists & religious zealots, however benign, who act out for the sake of attention & in the name of religion.
[…]Should you ignore this warning, you will meet with the vicious retaliatory arm of ANONYMOUS: We will target your public Websites, and the propaganda & detestable doctrine that you promote will be eradicated; the damage incurred will be irreversible, and neither your institution nor your congregation will ever be able to fully recover.
Open Letter from Westboro Baptist Servants of God to Anonymous Coward Crybaby “Hackers”: BRING IT!
[…]Bad miscalculation, girls! […] Anonymous is warring with God; very stupid for little boys claiming to be so smart.
DeadlyShoe
pretentious douchebags have argument, news at 11
piratedan
my religious thoughts trend to this nowadays:
http://verydemotivational.memebase.com/2011/02/19/demotivational-posters-atheists-2/
While I have nothing against those that have faith, regardless of which faith it is, I have to admit I am rooting against the Westboro folks, they strike me as being in that category of “I don’t think it means what you think it means” category.
dr. bloor
Oh, I have a dog in this fight, and now I’m going to enjoy watching the little girls make a point of dismantling Freddie’s pathetic little operation.
PurpleGirl
It could be an interesting fight; make some popcorn with lots of butter.
mcsey
Oops. And now comes the pwnage of every computer the Phelps clan has ever touched.
Omnes Omnibus
I would bet on the no-name dudes.
cathyx
To should be too. They need an editor.
calipygian
The alleged Westboro Church response is too snarky and l33t-ish to make me believe that the church actually issued it. It’s more like Anonymous issued it in the church’s name, having already hacked their servers.
kdaug
Why must you bait the m_c?
Lysana
How do you not have a horse in the race when Westboro Baptist Church has picketed the funerals of GLBT folks for years, then expanded to soldiers and divers others?
Time for those bastards to get their lives fucked up.
numbskull
I’m not sure that anything in Westboro’s emails would put them in a worse light than the vast majority of the world already considers them. As to the few misguided stumps who “believe” in what Westboro does, could there be anything revealed about the runnings of the “church” that would get the stumps to reconsider?
But who knows?
Omnes Omnibus
@numbskull: The church and its members have bank accounts and investments. I would not be too comfortable in the security of my money if I were them.
PeakVT
I’d sure like to see the Phelpsers’ internal emails, though they might be bright enough not to document incriminating discussions.
mistermix a.k.a. mastermix
@cathyx: That was my error transcribing the image that WBC posted. Their rants are usually correctly spelled and grammatically correct, though full of hate and bullshit.
PurpleGirl
OT: I’m “watching” CBS Sunday morning. Ben Stein just came on this piece about our economic status (inflation is coming, inflation is coming). When, oh when, is that shill for greed heads going to join the unemployed?
cathyx
What could come to light with exposing emails? Maybe we could be surprised by who could be backing them, or even conversing with them.
Ash Can
Somehow, the first image I get in my mind upon reading this is of wrestling a pig in a pool of mud.
Nethead Jay
Oh, this should certainly be some righteous fun. Though I also have a niggling suspicion that there might be some attention-diverting sleight-of-hand going on. Will have to keep an extra eye out on IRC and other corners…
RossInDetroit
By the time Anon is done with them, Phelps and his hateful clan will be reduced to traveling on foot and communicating by semaphore. If there’s one thing Anonymous knows it’s how to pwn your tech, and WBC is wide open for pillaging.
mythago
And another fool feeds the Phelps money machine.
J.D. Rhoades
(1) How do we know this is actually anon?
(2) Keep in mind how pathetically small the WBC actually is, for all the fuss they stir up. How dependent, really, are the seven to ten actual active members of the WBC on hackable tech?
Cat Lady
Shorter Anonymous: w3 iZ iN Ur t00bZ KiLLiN uR d00dz. All uR bAs3 r B3l0ng 2 uS.
liberal
@numbskull:
It’s possible that an email dump would reveal evidence of criminal activity. Also, AFAICT the “church” is actually an operation that makes money by suing people who interfere with their free speech rights and collecting big sums by submitting outsized lawyer fees, with some of the lawyers members of the church; perhaps some internal information would result in disbarments.
Cricket
Anonymous has a pretty effective record with stuff like this. I’m going to grab some popcorn and see how long it takes for Westboro’s web presence to disappear in a puff of DDoS attacks.
MattF
@PurpleGirl
Ben Stein. Is on Sunday morning TeeVee. As an expert in economics? OMFG.
geg6
OMG, the WBC’s Invisible Sky Wizard will smite the Anonymous geeks with…well, I guess Cheetos dust or something!
Gee, wonder if some groups might be found to be giving donations or other support on the down low? Seems a hacker could possibly find that out. And it might be embarrassing. If not that, there are many ways to disrupt finance and communications if one knows how to do such things. Personally, I have a dog in this fight as the evil on one side is more than obvious. I’m popping some popcorn.
anonymous
@J.D. Rhoades:
There is no “anonymous”. I can say a portion of the hive is actively pursuing Fred Phelps (and not just his stupid websites). I’m personally disinterested in him, and feel like giving him any attention is counterproductive. However, actions are commencing.
Quiddity
How does the Westboro Baptist Church get the money to pay for their protests? I’ve never read anything about that. Do they have supporters donating nationwide?
gypsy howell
As far as exposing their inner workings, it’s kinda hard to imagine what would constitute “bad press” for WBC beyond what they generate themselves.
But, I guess we can hold out for “criminal activity.”
Jim, Once
When I first read this, thought the word was ‘dismemberments’ – which also works for me.
Omnes Omnibus
@Quiddity: They are actually a litigation factory. When they “protest,” they look for someone to mess with them in some way and then sue. Many of the “church” members are lawyers.
mario
@MattF: anon should go after Ben Stein.
Or Sunday morning teevee
Ed Marshall
@mario:
They don’t have many rules, but the media can’t be targeted.
scav
@mario: ooo, geek flashback. I’m now envisioning the blanks taking down all the TV channels.
Roger Moore
@numbskull:
The part where it turns out they don’t believe the crap they’re spewing and the whole thing is just a ruse to give WBC grounds for lawsuits. People who are paying attention have figured this out already, but it would be nice to see it in their own words.
Alan
Completely against this. I was also very much against the “Dude, you have no koran” guy. To Anonymous, it seems that a group of peoples right to speak is based on how good at computers they are. That’s a horrible standard. They can no longer princibly defend wikileaks right to freedom of speech while attacking someone else’s right to speech. Imagine the ACLU doing this…
morzer
Anyone who punches Fred Phelps in the face, thinks for a second and then repeats the dose, is doing God’s work as far as I am concerned.
Another Commenter at Balloon Juice (fka Bella Q)
@Omnes Omnibus: Another reason that this could get very interesting. I’ll take Ethics Violations for $600 please Alex.
And if the electronically sophisticated types like HBGary couldn’t prevent embarrassment, I’d wager only g*d can help Phelps and crew. Heh.
Villago Delenda Est
The FSM frowns, in the noodly appendage palm sort of way, at vile creatures like Phelps and his clan of sociopath grifters.
Omnes Omnibus
@Alan: An argument can be made that WBC is not really speaking in a First Amendment sense. They are simply provoking a reaction in order to generate revenue through lawsuits. Also, to the extent that WBC is speaking, Anonymous can argue that they are not targeting the speech but rather the misuse of legal process.
scot
script 3 ft to the right. Must go to comments to correct. Can’t you guys figure this out?
Villago Delenda Est
@Omnes Omnibus:
This is what is so disturbing about WBC. Lawyers are supposed to have ethics, the Jeebus-addled, not so much.
Roger Moore
@morzer:
Unfortunately, anyone who punches Fred Phelps in the face is doing WBC’s work, too. Their goal is to provoke people into attacking them so they can sue them for everything they’re worth. The correct counter to the WBC gang is snark and mockery, not violence.
Ed Marshall
He thinks he is goading them into hacking his websites and that he will get on TV again.
That *isn’t* all that is going to happen to him. He doesn’t know what kind of beehive that he just stuck his dick in.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
Well then it looks like The Almighty’s computers are going to get hacked to shit.
A private person or organization can NOT violate a citizen’s 1st Am. rights.
Alan
Umm… no. It’s speech. The first amendment isn’t relevant because these are private actors, but even if the state threatened to shut them down, it would still be protected speech. Hate speech is still speech. If it were cross-burning, that wouldn’t be speech, the Supreme Court found, because that kind speech is so racially intimating that it instead becomes harrassment, but I think that rule is limited to cross burning.
This makes no sense. Anonymous wants to shut down their website. How is that targeting the misuse of legal process?
Alan
Of course, but I happen to believe that my human rights to speak freely don’t depend on the government, just as I believe that my right to use and enjoy my own property don’t depend on the police always being there to prevent people from robbing me.
Freedom of speech is a foundational human right that every person on the planet is entitled to regardless of whether the place they live has constitutionally protected it.
Pococurante
Not that I have any use for the WBC, but truth be told they are not doing anything different from any corporation and government entity across the globe.
In the absence of checks & balances the law is a weapon. We’re not living in a time where checks & balances are widely valued enough that populace at large will fight for them.
Ed Marshall
@Alan:
Cool story, bro.
Phil Perspective
@PurpleGirl: Barry Ritholtz has long exposed Ben Stein as a fraud. Why Stein is allowed on anything other than comedy shows is a mystery.
Cacti
As odious as I find the Phelps clan, I can’t support the use of criminal activity to suppress someone’s right to free speech.
Anonymous is actually accomplishing the unthinkable. They’re giving Westboro Baptist Church the moral high ground.
Omnes Omnibus
@Alan: As far as being protected speech goes, at what point do their actions tip over into being fighting words and, thus, unprotected?
If they are using the website, etc., for frivolous lawsuits, targeting it to stop that would be a non-speech related reason. It would have an effect on their ability to speak, but it would be incidental.
Pongo
“Anonymous is warring with God’
Conflating yourself with God could also be a bit of a problem for WBC come judgment day, I would think.
I’d love for someone to shut these clowns up, but have to agree with poster Alan at 34. I would be more in favor of Anon exposing these guys if their message weren’t so grandiose and it wasn’t so clear that they believe themselves alone to be qualified to decide whose speech should be ‘free.’ It’s great when they are going after schmucks, but a little ‘Big Brother-ish’ when you consider what they are capable of and that no one really knows whose running the show with Anon.
Tim
ANONYMOUS rocks.
Alan
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
To clarify, (because that first comment might have only made sense to me) I believe that a citizen of the world who belives in a free society must respect their fellow citizen’s right to speak. It is a human obligation. Therefore, the fact that these are private actors is irrelevant, though I’d obviously be more concerned if it were the government trying to shut down speech, simply because of the power the government has.
Roger Moore
@Roger Moore:
Actually, snark and mockery isn’t the best response to WBC; the ideal response would be for everyone to ignore them. They’re primarily a media machine, and the only way to make them go away completely is to cut them off from the attention they get. Unfortunately, they’re very well designed to target the media’s hot buttons, so publicizing what they do is as close as the media gets to a spinal reflex. Absent a way of getting the media to ignore them completely, the best response is to make them a target of derision rather than hatred and/or to expose them as a cynical lawsuit machine rather than a group of honestly crazy religious nuts.
morzer
@Alan:
Burning a Koran to insult another faith is a bit beyond “free speech” surely?
morzer
@Roger Moore:
That’s why the Flying Spaghetti Monster made dark alleys, cloudy nights and full-body ninja gear.
Cricket
@Alan: You are looking for intellectual consistency from a group that has none. This is because Anonymous is not organized in the traditional sense. The Anon group who got together to target the people going after Wikileaks may share no membership with the group who is targeting Westboro.
Jay
Hot DAMN! Anonymous’s words remind me of the Rock’s great return interview on wrestling TV last Monday.
I smell what Anonymous is cooking.
Pococurante
@Roger Moore: Agreed. As the media will always reward the WBC I personally think the Wikileaks treatment is the best approach. I feel pretty confident that we’d discover information that would be used in turn to sue them. Their public actions deserve ACLU-like defense but that doesn’t automatically mean they’re internally clean.
It’s difficult to continually walk the along the precipice without the occasional stepping over. Just ask Tunisia.
Xenos
@Cacti:
You have got to be kidding. If that is the case, screw the moral high ground.
Scott
@Alan:
I can see that you’re very… concerned.
Also, how can you be against the “Dude, you have no Koran” guy? That’s like being against robot velociraptors riding chainsaw skateboards. Never, ever oppose awesomeness.
Ed Marshall
@Cricket:
Exactly, I don’t think the Phelps campaign is going to pull in the most sophisticated people either. However, for the purposes of destroying a stupid troll, there will be plenty of people in it for the lulz.
PurpleGirl
@MattF: Well, not so much as an economics expert but a “public intellectual” who comments on current topics.
@mario: Heh, I could get behind going after Ben Stein.
@Phil Perspective: Exactly. I turn the sound off.
I needed to vent. Thank you all for the responses.
doofus
I only hope that Anon has a more ambitious goal than just DNS attacks. That won’t do nothing to WBC. If you wanna kill WBC then you need to separate them from their support on the right wing somehow. They need to lose in a spectacular way that actually kills them off. The only thing I can think of that would do the trick is to kill their business model. Make litigation a net loss for them, and they will stop. Live by the sword of litigation, die by the sword of litigation. Hopefully Anon is up to the task.
The Pale Scot
Yep. freddie and friends are going to be limited to keeping money in shoe boxes and communicating by carrier pigeon.
Cacti
@Xenos:
Just remember that when some hacker decides to target the web site of a group you agree with politically.
MattF
About the WBC, I think ignoring them is the right answer, unfortunately that’s a very tough thing to do. Phelps clearly feeds on the anger that the group generates, and the anger is one of the things that holds the group together.
Also, fwiw, I expect that when the group finally does collapse, some exceptionally ugly stuff will crawl out of the wreckage. It’s not going to be good for anybody.
morzer
@Xenos:
Or at the very least place mines under it before the WBC sets its hooves there.
morzer
@Cacti:
Well, people are going to do that anyway, regardless of what Anonymous does or what we think of it. Breitbart, Rose and O’Keefe have basically been doing the physical equivalent for over a year now.
Xenos
@Cacti: Did you have moral problems with the ‘Anon’ attacks on Scientology? Cults need to be fought or you can end up with long term problems. I would rather have Anon taking them down a few pegs than have people demanding that governments do it.
The Pale Scot
has it started? Google has this as its top pick
“Westboro Baptist Church Home Page
Site of anti-homosexual propagandist Fred Phelps of Topeka, Kansas.”
who calls themselves a propagandist?
Scott
I wonder whether Anonymous will actually accomplish anything. If they hack the website, it’ll be down for a few hours, then it’ll be put back up. If they get e-mails, they’ll mostly be things that the Phelpsians don’t care about. Exposing them as non-Christians won’t cause much damage — no one actually believes they’re Christians anyway.
On the other hand… if they’ve already hacked in unannounced, read the e-mails, and found juicy stuff — say, evidence of criminal activity or evidence that they’re taking their marching orders and/or receiving payments directly from Rupert Murdoch or the RNC — then this would be an interesting bit of ninjitsu…
RossInDetroit
I think we owe WBC for clearly demonstrating a catastrophic bug in the media machine. No matter how wrong and hateful they are, the news programmers can’t ignore them any more than an addict can walk away from the pipe.
Alan
I find the idea of “fighting words” to be a ridiculous. If you go up to someone on the street and call him nasty words, even if you have a good reason to, I’ll agree that’s probably not free speech since it’s really just harrassment and it’s definitely not civil. To me, there’s no way that a website or posters at a protest could be considered fighting words.
I’m not sure how one can use a website for frivolous lawsuits, but you can and should be able to have a website for any purpose you want, (with some very minor exceptions, i.e. child porn, defamation) even to encourage people to file frivolous lawsuits. Whether a lawsuit is frivolous is for a court to say and people have no right to decide they don’t like it and decide to take it down themselves. Even the court probably wouldn’t have the right to order the website taken down due to the first amendment.
joes527
@Another Commenter at Balloon Juice (fka Bella Q): meh. No, I don’t think that WBC can hold off Anon’s attack. It wouldn’t surprise me though if WBC is Luddite enough to not be hurt by a technology based attack.
WBC are vile, evil people, and I wish that they would eat a bag of poison dicks, but attacking them to shut them up … in the name of free speech? I’m just not seeing it. Laws that prevent _any_ demonstration at funerals are fine. But directed attacks … not so much.
First they came for the raging assholes, but I said nothing because I am not a … … … never mind.
doofus
@morzer: Exactly. And Breitbart, et al have been winning using those tactics. Ignoring, mocking, and “keeping the moral highground” are pretty obviously losing tactics.
Drouse
The Phelps clan and to a lesser extent Anonymous suffer from a social disease(in the Elton John sense)/addiction I call assholism. It florishes in an environment where there are no penalties and often rewards for being an utter dickwad.
Alan
If I interfered with your right to free speech, would that still be considered “awesomeness”? If I unplugged Jon Stewart’s microphone as he was awarding a “reasonableness” award to that guy would it be considered awesomeness?
Omnes Omnibus
Leaving aside my arguments above, I think the WBC folk have an absolute right to do their protests. I think they are abhorrent, but that is another matter. As far as the Anonymous ultimatum goes, I think both of these groups have more or less decided to absent themselves from normal society. In the words of Bob Dylan, “if you live outside the law, you must be honest,” and I think the WBC has failed in that regard. Actions have consequences.
morzer
@Alan:
As far as I know, he didn’t stop the guy ranting. He did, however, stop the burning of a Koran, which really isn’t “free speech” by any rational measure.
Alan
Nope. It’s free speech. Sorry.
joes527
@J.D. Rhoades:
You misunderstand Anonymous. Anyone who claims to be Anonymous, is Anonymous. They are everyone and they are no one.
Southern Beale
Please, Anonymous: if you are reading this, find out WHO IS FUNDING THESE ASSWIPES. I refuse to believe that court judgments are the sole source of their income. They don’t appear to have jobs (other than lawsuits, which are expensive to wage, let me point out). They travel the country (indeed the world) to spread their message of hate. Someone must be helping them out in the money department.
WHO?
morzer
@Alan:
Not by any reasonable measure, nor am I going to pretend that it is. What next, burning buildings as a gesture of protest? Or witches? The guy was free to rant. Didn’t lose his free speech at all.
Cacti
@Xenos:
If the choices are government overreach or private vigilantism, I choose option C: “None of the above”.
Omnes Omnibus
@morzer: In my view, the stealing of the Koran led to more, rather than less, speech. The Koran burner’s point was clearly made. No one doubts what is view point was or is. At the same time, the expressive conduct of the “Dude” dude was speech countering that of the Koran burner.
Ed Marshall
@Omnes Omnibus:
Anyone can issue an Anonymous communique. If Phelps had shut up it would have covered under the “we are not your private army” clause, and anonymous is pretty damn busy these days working in Algeria, Libya, and Iran. That’s where the action is.
However, when Phelps trolled back, he *invited* them to come fuck him up.
Scott
Okay, folks, let’s stop feeding the Republican concern troll.
scav
@Alan: Guy could still talk all he wanted without the physical item. There’s a grey area here about free speech yes, but you seem to be insisting on the right to free speech and not being mocked for your positions or talked back to. I could give three shits about the WBC web-site and rather hope they just leave it up because the interesting stuff will be in the e-mails, financial records and various other stuff. Which is also a big ol’ grey area but in this game of limbo between dubious snakes, well, forgive me, I’m wearing the colors of a certain snake. I’m not sure they’ve exactly figured out how they’re going to manage a denial of crayola attack but one can dream.
ETA: Sorry Scott. Missed the deadline.
WereBear
@Omnes Omnibus: Beware the wrath of Righteous Hackers.
Let them rise up, and visit mayhem upon the small of heart and dark of soul. May their bank accounts be screwed upon, their Internet connections clog up, and all of their renewals come due at once.
morzer
@Omnes Omnibus:
And, in fact, nothing stopped the de-Koraned one from de-Koraning the de-Koraner. He just wasn’t organized. In fact, he failed to prepare to enhance his free speech, which was very naughty and negligent of him.
fasteddie9318
But GUYS, concern troll is REALLY CONCERNED!
joes527
@scav: So … Piss Christ isn’t free speech?
Alan
I’m not a republican troll. To everyone who supported the koran guy, because, hey, who cares, that idiot was just going to burning something, he could still talk, even though the guy snatched it from him… do you all have no problem with a flag burning amendment? I mean, you could still criticize the US, you just can’t burn the flag, right. It’s the same thing, so no loss of freedom, right?
fashionOfChrist
Looks like I need to go get myself a Low Orbit Ion Cannon from 4chan so I can join in on the festivities.
morzer
@Alan:
So, do you approve of burning witches as a gesture of protest against Satan?
Donut
@Alan:
Alan, respectfully disagree with your line of thinking.
There is no infringement on WBC’s First Amendment rights. None whatsoever. Anonymous is not a government or government entity, so they cannot be guilty of such a thing. WBC members, even if their computers and servers are disabled, can still speak their minds in myriad other ways.
Now, if you couch this in terms of which entity can shout the other one down, in a manner of speaking, that’s something I can agree is happening here. It’s terribly uncivil, in terms of “impoliteness”. In other words, very bad manners.
But the world is full of uncouth, ill-mannered people, isn’t it? I guess I think WBC has far worse manners than Anonymous, and if Anonymous pulls something off here, it really will be a matter of big ol’ karma bitch-slap, and not much more.
PS and confidential to ED Kain – vis a vis the Gifford’s/Rall, et al shooting, this is the kind of thing that I meant could/should be done to Westboro rather than passing actual laws that actually restrict WBC’s freedom of assembly and speech.
Alan
I doubt anyone could get a permit to burn a building due to how dangerous it would be, but in principle if you owned the building, that would be fine. Obviously, destroying someone else’s property (or hurting people, i.e. witches) is not speech. It’s a crime.
Ed Marshall
@fashionOfChrist:
The word on the street is to hold fire on the ion cannons.
http://pastebin.com/sJ8evZPA
Alan
So, do you approve of burning witches as a gesture of protest against Satan?
morzer
@Alan:
So you concede that actually there are limits to free speech?
Omnes Omnibus
@Alan: You are, of course, twisting what was said on the Koran issue. The flag burning amendment or any flag burning law is government action that limits speech. It is not relevant the Koran burning incident. The Koran dude was acting as a private citizen. Does anyone have any doubt that about the message that the Koran burner was trying to convey? No. He successfully conveyed it; in other words, he spoke. The “Dude” guy also spoke. He successfully conveyed a message as well. In both cases, the actual Koran was incidental to the message. The remedy to bad speech is more speech, and that is just what happened in that case.
Alan
As I said above, I think free speech is a human right. Members of a free society have an obligation to tolerate speech that we find loathsome so that our own rights to speak can be respected.
To me, it goes beyond bad manners. Those who do lack respect for others rights to speak, lose any moral rights for respect for their own speech. I trust that if I tried to shut down your speech, you’d be cool with it.
morzer
@Alan:
So your basic response is not to make an argument, or define limits, but rather to utter a moral plea, accompanied by an implicit threat?
Alan
It’s not speech! Hurting people is not speech! Child porn is not speech because you’re hurting people by making it. Defamation is not speech because you’re hurting people when you make false statements of fact against them that goes beyond someone not agreeing with your speech. Falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater is not speech because people will be hurt. Conspiracy to commit murder is not speech because it is a crime. If you want to call these things limits on speech, go ahead. I just choose to say they’re not really “speech.”
morzer
@Alan:
So why is burning something “speech”? And if we are going to follow up on your falsely shouting fire example – why is burning a Koran to insult a religion a superior thing to do?
Donut
@Alan:
I don’t have an obligation to tolerate anyone who is saying something hateful, and with which I disagree. I have just as much right to get up in Fred Phelps’ grill as he does mine.
Again, no government entity involved, no one’s being censored.
You’re arguing points about civility. Fine. I actually agree with you on that. It’s pretty fucking rude and disrespectful. But again, so are a lot of things in life. Cry me a river.
But this proposed Anonymous attack is not a matter of free speech or Constitutionality, dude. Sorry, but it’s just not.
Omnes Omnibus
@Alan: Again, we are talking about to groups who have decided, each in their own way, that the ordinary rules of human society do not apply to them. In the anarchic space in which they have chosen to operate, do they really have the right to appeal to the rules of society?
Alan
What threat? By saying you lose your moral rights to have your rights respected by others? I don’t think that’s a threat, I’m really just calling people hypocrites. In actuality, I would still be upset if people tried to shut down a person’s speech, even if that person had previously had no respect for freedom of speech.
Alan
Because falsely shouting fire in a theater will cause a panic that could lead to people being trampled and injured.
There is no such inherent risk with burning a Koran.
fashionOfChrist
join the fun.
find LOIC at sourceforge.net v1.0.4.0
checked it for malware myself (.NET is easy to disassemble)
it’s clean
http://sourceforge.net/projects/loic/
morzer
@Alan:
But you’ve just put that out there as your other possible response. You began talking about shutting down other people’s speech as your response, remember?
And tell me, why is it not free speech to hurt children by making child porn, but somehow hurting Muslims by burning Korans is free speech by your definition?
Alan
What does that mean? Does that mean you have the right to arm yourself with clubs and you go with your friends to one of their protests and charge them causing them to disperse? Does that mean you have the right to shut down their website because you don’t like it? If you don’t like what the NY Times or Fox News is saying, do you have a right to shut them down also?
morzer
@Alan:
Oh, so now we have to pretend that no Muslims would have been upset by a Koran being burned, and so it’s fine and dandy to call doing so free speech?
Donut
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yup.
fashionOfChrist
Alan,
freedom of speech != freedom of repercussions of said speech.
And the WBC shall reap what they sow
PIGL
@Alan: “Sorry” is not a fracking argument.
Alan
That was a rhetorical device intended to make the commenter think about whether he would be ok with what he was saying if the same methods he is advocating were used on him.
Because you’re not really hurting muslims. Hurting someone’s feelings, even in a horrible way is not actually hurting them.
Calming Influence
I gotta go with Alan on supporting WBC free speech rights, so much so that I hope Anon publishes every fucking email and internal document those sociopaths ever wrote.
Our government was never going to reveal HBGary’s illegal tactics for discrediting whistle-blowers and critics of powerful multinational companies. And Halliburton will never have to answer questions in court about its war profiteering without a group like Anonymous exposing its secrets to the world.
Despite what the supreme court says, corporations are not people and deserve no free speech rights. WBC is a corporation disguised as a church that uses litigation for profit. I hope Anonymous gives them a very vigorous and public ass-fucking.
Omnes Omnibus
@Alan: Are you being willfully obtuse? There was no threat of violence in the statement you quote. Do not build a strawman to battle.
Alan
Btw, everybody feel free to keep these challenges at me coming. I love debating this issue and I feel strongly about it. I have no ill will towards those here who disagree and I completely understand where you’re all coming from. I missed the “dude you have no koran guy” debate here because I was busy at work that day, so anyway, this is fun. I hope none of you are actually offended by anything I say.
morzer
@Alan:
Hurting someone’s feelings isn’t hurting them? So it’s fine and dandy to demean them, cause them stress, make them depressed, publicly humiliate them? If that’s what your free speech is worth, I sincerely hope that ideologues like you never get anywhere near real power over real people.
And I notice that suddenly it’s fine to threaten people, and then turn around and say “Just kidding. Rhetorical device. Nothing to see here. Move along”.
Donut
@Alan:
What does that mean? What do you mean what does that mean? It means when Fred Phelps says something I disagree with, I have every right to shout at him louder than he shouted at me. Your example of physical violence is significantly different – and a red herring from my original point: there is no infringement on free speech happening here. And I didn’t say anyone had a given right to do any kind of sabotage to intellectual property, such as a web site. Is that clear? I did not say it was anyone’s right to do that. I said it is not a matter of infringement of the Constitution, because it is not being done by the government.
And of course, civil and criminal penalties may apply if someone’s property is damaged. Anonymous is fully aware of those risks. They’re big boys and girls.
Alan
Well, if there was no threat of violence it would be fine, but shutting down someone’s website, or snatching the object they are attempting to burn is “violence” even if it’s not what we might call physical violence. I was just trying to get at what he thinks he could do to “get up in someone’s grill”
fashionOfChrist
thanks Ed,
noted
will hold off at the moment.
Alan
If Phelps were making a speech would you have the right to get up on the stage and try to shout over him so no one could hear it?
Btw, I realize it’s not the government.
morzer
@Alan:
But your argument makes everything free speech, except when you personally don’t like it. That isn’t an argument, that’s a license to repress people who disagree with you.
morzer
@Alan:
Why would you repress someone who chose to exercise their free speech that way?
Alan
Yes, you may not like it, but we who live in civil society are grown ups and are expected to tolerate people who hurt our feelings. You can ignore it, you can laugh at it, you can do what you want, but you can’t try to shut them down.
Oh come on.
Donut
@Alan:
Yes! The First Amendment is pretty clear about that. If we’re in a public place, I have all the right in the world to do that.
Again, it would be rude and uncivil. But not illegal.
If the police or some other arm of the government ordered Phelps to shut up? Now, that’s an entirely different matter. But I am not the po-po, my friend.
fashionOfChrist
Ed,
Since you seem to have your finger on the pulse – we now apparently have ALL phone #’s and addresses (home work, otherwise) of major players at WBC…
can I give their contact info to collection agencies and telemarketers? or is their a fatwah against that too?
Alan
Explain how? I have made a pretty clear distinction between speech and crimes. Are there grey areas? Yeah, probably, like if an anti-abortion website has the names and addresses of abortion doctors on their website with bulls-eyes over them. That’s probably free speech, but it’s definitely pretty close to a direct incitement of violence which is not free speech.
Omnes Omnibus
@Alan: Please explain how the Koran burner’s speech was shut down. I understand that he was not able to follow through on the burning, but how was he unable to convey his ideas?
morzer
@Alan:
Interesting to see how legalistic you are about this when it comes to facing the consequences of your “free speech”. If it involves damage to property, you immediately rule it out of court, but when it comes to psychological harm, well, that’s just too bad, isn’t it? Of course, you ducked the real question, which wasn’t surprising, given your fanaticism about free speech. But I ask again – why is it “free speech” when you do genuine psychological harm, and yet if a building is damaged, that’s not acceptable?
Ed Marshall
@fashionOfChrist:
Follow the hive here
Alan
Legally you may have that right, unless there were police there and they got you for disturbing the peace, though if it were Phelps or a KKK leader, the police might not stop you, unfortunately. Is that right, no, but it’s reality. As for whether you have a moral right to do it, you most certainly don’t. If you were a college student and you rushed the stage as someone was giving a speech, I would hope you would expelled or get other severe discipline. I don’t want you or anyone else deciding for me what speech I have the right to listen to. Would you like it if I owned a cable company and decided that Fox News was the only news channel worth watching so I didn’t include MSNBC or CNN in your package options? Well, that’s what you’re doing when you try to “shout louder than someone.” You’re deciding what speech other people get to hear.
Judas Escargot
Meh. I was young, once, too.
Want to play Gibsonian superhero? Expose the Koch brothers as clandestine neofascists. Or get and publish the secret donor list for the US Chamber of Commerce.
WBC is small fry.
Ed Marshall
Wow, I don’t have permission to edit that, that 4chan link got deleted. Ummm, last word that I heard was it’s all systems go. Go nuts, fashion!
Alan
Because I think that an adult has the obligation to not be psychologically harmed by speech they don’t like. As an adult we have the freedom to ignore speech we don’t like. Btw, I’m definitely in favor of reasonable restrictions on speech, like not allowing anti-abortion protests within so many feet of an abortion clinic, or keeping protesters so many feet from funerals.
morzer
@Alan:
Oh I see. So you want to blame the victim in order to preserve your doctrinaire version of free speech? In other words, people don’t matter.
Instructive, but not surprising.
Alan
Because his intended speech was that Islam is so evil that their holy books must be burned. Simply saying that is not what he intended, nor is threatening to burn the book. Only in burning the book would he have been able to do what he intended. If actually burning something is no big deal, why are people, including me, vociferously against a flag burning amendment?
Ed Marshall
@Judas Escargot:
Where do you think nearly all the stuff from Wikileaks came from? It’s Sunday morning, and destroying Fred Phelps is just something to do for the lulz.
Alan
Yeah, I guess it is blaming the victim for their reaction. I am sorry about that. I don’t mean to minimize it. I’m not a particularly religious Jew, but if someone attacked Judaism or burned a Torah, I would be outraged and horrified.(though realistically the only way for most non-jews to acquire a real Torah would be to steal one from a Synagogue since they’re worth thousands of dollars, so I would be more outraged at the theft.) I mea,n we have to make choices about what rights are important, since sometimes various rights come into conflict with each other. I choose that someone’s right to speak is more important than someone else’s “right” not to be psychologically harmed. If everyone could just say they were psychologically harmed by speech they didn’t like, we would have very little free speech. Everything is potentally horribly offensive. Who gets to choose what’s really offensive? I think it’s much better to say that no speech or idea is so offensive that anyone has the right to stop it from being said.
different church-lady
Hot idiot on idiot action!!!!
different church-lady
@Quiddity: How much money does it take for 20 people to drive a bus somewhere?
different church-lady
@different church-lady:
Self-fixed!
polyorchnid octopunch
@morzer: Absolutely not, no more than burning a flag is. That said, scooping the koran out of the guys hand as he’s about to pour the gas on it is also speech.
Alan
@fashionOfChrist:
If you’re still here, I’d be interested in knowing what kinds of repercussions to freedom of speech are ok in your mind, and what kinds of repercussions are not ok?
Alan
@polyorchnid octopunch:
How is that speech? Surely if I snatched your wallet out of your hand as you were going to pay for a hot-dog because I don’t like people who eat meat, you would not consider that free speech.
Xenos
@Omnes Omnibus: Since the preacher had announced he was going to burn the Koran, he gave notice of anticipatory abandonment of the book. Abandoned property can be seized and safeguarded with there being a tort of conversion, right? Right?
Mr. would-be-burner never got around for suing for possession from skateboard-guy, so who cares?
fasteddie9318
@Alan:
That shit is bananas, dude. Although, “debating” and “summarily rejecting out of hand anything that doesn’t conform to my narrow doctrinal worldview” don’t really have that much in common, do they?
Here’s a simple question: when Fred Phelps goes out to exercise his free speech rights at somebody’s funeral, do the people at that funeral have an equal right to counter-demonstrate against Fred Phelps? I ask only because free speech purity trolls seem often to forget that the response to someone’s exercise of free speech can also be, you know, an exercise of free speech. And when you’re responding, please don’t use rhetorical devices that imply that I’m saying it would be OK to vandalize Fred Phelps’ property or assault his person. You’ve been doing that a lot, as though we’re all in support of Anonymous hacking into the man’s website and electronic information, but I haven’t seen any of the people you’ve been arguing with here say that what Anonymous will be doing isn’t or shouldn’t be a crime.
Sentient Puddle
Last I heard, the LOIC makes no attempt to mask your IP address. Seems to me that it would be utterly moronic to use it.
Donut
Alan, my disagreement with you was/is on the Constitutional point, and that alone. You just keep on ignoring that, buddy. You keep showing false flags that are not germane to my point, which is and will remain that no one’s actual First Amendment rights are being taken away if one private person or group manages to yell louder than another private person or group, let alone take down a web site. As long as Anonymous members are willing to take the consequences of their actions, and I believe they are, then I don’t feel like I have much to say in the matter.
I get far more freaked out when our government does that shit – and make no mistake, it does it all the time – and I hope that you feel the same as respects actual violations of the Constitution.
WBC’s right to air their views remains intact no matter what Anonymous does to their web site. Again, I never said Anonymous has the moral high ground, just that they have as much standing as anyone to fight Fred Phelps on his own turf, and using his own tactics against him.
I’m done. Carry on.
Alan
I’m pretty sure I said multiple times on this thread that I acknowledge that the constitution is pretty much irrelevant when private actors attempt to stop speech.
I’m also pretty sure that you ignored my point, which is that human beings have an obligation to respect someone else’s rights to free speech, even when they hate that speech and even when they hate the people making that speech.
Since you seem to admit that Anonymous does not have the moral high ground the only logical thing to do is to join me in condemning Anonynous for their announced attack on the WBC website. Since you don’t do that, I can only conclude that you support Anonymous’s actions. I wish you would rethink your position.
Ed Marshall
@Sentient Puddle:
Get behind a proxy server. However, there is an emerging consensus that Fred or someone in his organization wrote the original communique ascribed to anonymous trying to create an attack against him.
Alan
@fasteddie9318:
It obviously depends what would be meant by “counter-demonstrate. If it’s non-violent, then sure, of course. Btw, as I’ve said, I would support laws prohibiting protests within so many feet of funerals.
Forgive me, but I do believe there’s been plenty of support for Anonymous’s planned actions in this thread. I certainly know that many commenters here and elsewhere support the “Dude you have no koran guy.” I believe that his actions were just as bad as what Anonymous plans to do.
fasteddie9318
@Alan:
OK, but you have to condemn Stalin and the broccoli mandate first.
Arclite
@scot: Looks fine to me, Win 7 O/S, all browsers. What’s your O/S, browser, hardware, and screen resolution?
nestor
@Alan:
I would, but it’s Hockey Day in America.
Omnes Omnibus
@Alan:
Of course, we don’t live in a world of binary choices. Saying that someone does not have the moral high ground on an issue does not mean that one must condemn that person. There are issues where all parties are down in the muck. One can still have a preference or one can say that one doesn’t approve of either group’s actions or any variety of other possibilities that one can think up.
fasteddie9318
@Alan:
Is that what I was talking about? No, I believe I was talking about whether or not people were denying that what Anonymous supposedly plans to do would be a crime. I supported Anonymous hacking MasterCard because I hate credit card companies, but I know that what they did was a crime. Robbing from the rich and giving to the poor is a crime too, but I’ve always dug Robin Hood. Rosa Parks was arrested for not switching seats on that bus, but I still think she was pretty goddamn righteous myself.
polyorchnid octopunch
@morzer: That is a ridiculous comparison, morzer. Being offended is not being injured. Children forced into producing child porn are being gravely injured.
fasteddie9318
@Ed Marshall:
Probably trying to get the publicity surrounding the talk of an attack against him. If he’s really inviting an attack, I don’t think he understands what he’s asking for.
polyorchnid octopunch
@Alan: Now you’ve gone and done the thing you were just complaining about… speaking of crimes against property as violence. They’re not.
It doesn’t mean they’re good… but they’re not violence.
Let me state the difference in a way that everyone can easily understand. If someone slaps Fred Phelpps in the face with a fish, that’s violent. If someone vandalizes his website, that’s not violent. Violent crime is crime that includes actually injuring human beings. A website is not a human being.
Omnes Omnibus
@fasteddie9318: Alan does seem to be conflating legality and morality, or, at least, he is arguing whichever of those seems to best support his position any given time.
Edited slightly for typos and improved coherence.
Alan
@fasteddie9318:
Is this one of those new internet traditions? Of course I condemnn Stalin, and a mandate for people to eat broccoli would be pretty stupid and a significant attack on our rights to eat what we want. I condemn it at well.
different church-lady
Why you peeps keep blathering about free speech? Skateboard guy STOLE that Koran, pure and simple. If preacher guy wants it back, he knows where it is.
Stop making constitutional issues where there are none. Your belly button lint is not that interesting.
different church-lady
@fasteddie9318:
I condemn these demands that people condemn things.
Omnes Omnibus
@different church-lady: Skateboard dude saved a sacred item from desecration. Opinions differ.
Alan
@polyorchnid octopunch:
I don’t think there’s a significant difference in this context. Both are examples of thuggery designed to prevent people from speaking. If I killed the editors of the NY Times or instead just burned down its headquarters and it’s printing presses, making sure to do so when noone was there, both would be pretty violent things, no? I understand that taking down a website doesn’t seem like violence, but really that’s what the effect is.
morzer
@polyorchnid octopunch:
And your response is a distortion. I was talking about actual psychological harm. Do buck up.
different church-lady
@Alan:
To paraphrase Mel Brooks: tragedy is when I get a papercut. Comedy is when someone slaps Fred Phelpps in the face with a fish.
Alan
@Omnes Omnibus:
I apologize if I’ve been unclear, but everything I’ve stated in this thread has been a moral, not legal argument. I may have bolstered my moral argument, with what the Supreme Court says about free speech, but that’s only because I geneally agree morally with those legal principles.
morzer
@Alan:
And yet, people being psychologically harmed is perfectly acceptable. Must be nice to have such a flexible view of the world.
Except on “free speech” of course, otherwise you’d support the “Dude, you have no Koran” guy and his legitimate exercise of his free speech and right to protest.
fasteddie9318
Wank on, young Alan, wank on. The whole world wanks with you.
Alan
@Omnes Omnibus:
And if I thought animal flesh was a sacred item and snatched a steak from your hands before you put it on the grill that would be ok?
morzer
@fasteddie9318:
Might be time for a rousing chorus of “You’ll never wank alooone”.
polyorchnid octopunch
@Alan: Me buying a hot dog is not me holding a media event to burn a book. Context matters.
What that guy did was performance art at a media event. He culture jammed that event in an unbelievably spectacular fashion. That’s very different from (for example) sneaking into his house or church for a private ceremony doing exactly the same thing.
The reverend was burning the book strictly for the free publicity it would generate. That publicity was turned against him by skateboard guy. That’s the entire event in a nutshell, right there. The only injury done to the reverend was not having his hoped-for free publicity turn out the way he hoped it would.
Skateboard guy’s clearly got some light fingers, I’ll give him that.
morzer
@Alan:
Why yes, according to your theory.
*snicker*
After all, it is all just “moral” argument, innit? No need for logic or consistency.
different church-lady
Depends: did you slap me in the face with it first?
What? I’m just workin’ the material here!
arguingwithsignposts
@Alan:
Which is why you keep bringing up the basic *legal* document of the United States. Morality and Legality =/= the same thing.
morzer
@arguingwithsignposts:
Come now, these demands for consistency are just unfair. Alan’s free speech theory gives him the right to ignore his own words, after all.
Omnes Omnibus
@Alan: The meat would go bad if you kept it too long.
@polyorchnid octopunch: I think you summed it up very well here.
polyorchnid octopunch
@morzer: Chyeah, because being repeatedly raped in front of cameras as a child is exactly the same as seeing someone burn a book you happen to like very much.
morzer
@polyorchnid octopunch:
Except that I didn’t say they were the same. But do keep wanking away.
nestor
@Alan:
Good move. Folks were beginning to question your motives.
Alan
@polyorchnid octopunch:
So you’re saying we have less rights to free speech if we’re only doing it for free publicity? Also, who are you to say he was only doing it for publicity?
Alan
@arguingwithsignposts:
I agree, though I think the freedom of speech laws in the United States are pretty moral, so sue me!
burnspbesq
@Lysana:
Sorry, but no. You’re either for free speech and freedom of religion 100 percent of the time, or you’re on the wrong side of the conversation.
Anonymous is absolutely, unequivocally wrong here. Nobody voted for them to be Grand Arbiters of What Is Acceptable Speech. If they commit a crime in their attacks on WBC, I hope they rot in jail.
fashionOfChrist
well Alan,
If picketing the funerals of service members is fair game,
so is taking down the hateful website of the picketers.
Anonymous has spoken – and I happen to agree
Bashing your dome in with a brick, on the other hand – is NOT protected speech – as much as the thought warms me inside.
See, I have standards.
ruemara
@Alan:
Honey, burning a Koran is not free speech, it’s hate speech. We do have laws against that. Unfortunately, it’s only after the “free speech” portion has gone over into hate speech. Taking the Koran to protect it, was also free speech, if you’re going to say that burning it was an act of free speech.
arguingwithsignposts
@Alan:
They can be moral, but you can’t base your moral argument on legal docs, man. It’s like a law prof. explained to me once. He doesn’t teach law and ethics because they are not the same thing, and confusing the two is misleading.
morzer
@burnspbesq:
So you would support the practice of a religion that involved the public slaughter of an unwilling victim every Tuesday?
Just askin’.
Omnes Omnibus
@Alan: No, he is saying that the publicity stunt did not turn out as he expected. Fate, in guise of a skateboarder with a ponytail, intervened. Again, he spoke, but his speech was met by opposing speech. If burning a Koran is speech, acting to prevent the burning is also speech. Both are expressive conduct. Taking the Koran was the expressive conduct equivalent of saying, “Yes, we get your point, but you are wrong.”
nestor
@burnspbesq:
You are apparently unfamiliar with the concept of lulz.
fashionOfChrist
and Alan,
We’re not doing anything except requesting the content of their website (just like you do when you visit)
Only there’s a lot of us, and we’re doing it really really quickly.
The people have spoken, and seem to think you suck.
Alan
@Omnes Omnibus:
I guess I don’t want to live in a world where theft of property is considered “opposing speech.” I also don’t want to live in a world where preventing someone from speaking or being heard is considered speech. To me, it seems more like thuggery.
Alan
@fashionOfChrist:
I see. That sounds like buying every copy of a newspaper, so no one else can read it. How liberal of you!
morzer
@Alan:
But you would like to live in a world where people burn the sacred books of another person’s religion just to attack that religion?
Interesting priorities you have. Property first, eh?
fashionOfChrist
@burnspbesq
duh man.
Anonymous is a loose knit conglomeration of like minded people. Regular folk. No board of directors, no leader, and nothing to elect. Just peeps. Who happen to disagree with you.
Nobody elects citizens – see, that’d be kind of counter productive to the democratic process..
*facepalm*
go read something more in line with your cognitive abilities – say People magazine. You are just embarrassing yourself here.
Alan
@morzer:
If it means I live in a world where everybody tolerates my right to say what I want to say, then so be it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Alan: So you would like a world where all debate is carried out under Roberts’ Rules of Order, except that each speaker gets unlimited time and scope to participate in the debate? Welcome to the real world. It is messier here.
Omnes Omnibus
Deleted double post. Apologies.
morzer
@Alan:
And you still think property matters more than free speech, don’t you?
Show me on the doll where Ayn Rand touched you.
fashionOfChrist
@Alan,
good thing I’m not a liberal then.
And if anyone ever publishes a bunch of nasty smears about servicemembers – I would do everything I can to shut it down.
I think you can be judged by the org you defend.
Now I am going to further exercise my 1st Amendment rights and call you an idiot and a scumbag.
different church-lady
@morzer:
Well, at least we’d know they’re devout.
@burnspbesq:
DING DING DING DING DING DING WE HAVE A WINNER! Anonymous and WBC are just different sides of the same million-sided die. They’re both an unsavory stew of illegal, immoral, sleazy, arrogance, and righteous posturing — the only thing that distinguishes them from each other is the ratios. Taking sides with one or the other cannot be based on anything more than which POV your sympathies lie with. So having endless conversations about morality and legality when it comes to this throwdown is nothing but intellectual diddling in support of your fee-fees.
That being said, I don’t agree with the bits before and after the chunk I quoted. But that’s just me, and the constitution will back me up on that.
Alan
@ruemara:
No, it is free speech, just as burning a flag is. This is true both legally and morally. There aren’t laws in the United States against hate speech, and nor should there be. The one exception, legally, is cross burning, which is definitely debatable whether morally that makes sense.
Alan
@Omnes Omnibus:
That’s a strawman argument.
morzer
@different church-lady:
Well, I was wondering when Burnie would admit that, in practice, no-one supports 100% free speech or religion, despite claiming to do so on the ‘net. Everyone has a cut-off point, and it’s better to admit it and work out a strong compromise, rather than aspire to unreality.
morzer
@Alan:
But a moral straw-man, so it’s as good as anything you’ve offered, right?
But back to the doll. Where did Ayn Rand touch you?
fashionOfChrist
“Taking sides with one or the other cannot be based on anything more than which POV your sympathies lie with. So having endless conversations about morality and legality when it comes to this throwdown is nothing but intellectual diddling in support of your fee-fees.”
DING DING DING
Thank you church-lady – you are 100% SPOT ON – at least in that regard.
So I’ll continue to LOIC wbc while Alan cries and pounds sand.
Thanks for playing
Alan
@morzer:
They are both important legal and moral rights. I’m not really sure what you’re getting at, but if you’re trying to say that stealing property is a type of free speech, I categorically reject that.
Corner Stone
@burnspbesq: I love it that you keep saying people should “vote” for certain other people to do things.
“Bluh, bluh..I didn’t “vote” for that guy to do that thing! So it’s completely not legit! Bluh, bluh.”
Omnes Omnibus
@Alan: I don’t think so. I may have exaggerated slightly for effect, but I think it is effectively the argument you are making.
fashionOfChrist
At least the group I support doesn’t picket the funerals of fallen service members, so I feel I can comfortably claim the moral high ground here. If you don’t agree, I don’t care – I have no problem sleeping at night.
That pretty much sums up my position.
morzer
@Alan:
And why do you say so? Why is property the cut-off for you, but hate speech isn’t?
Morbo
If they get one lawsuit out of it, they’ll probably consider it a wash.
Although it’s a bigger “if” than they probably think it is in this case. Good luck suing that networked printer.
nestor
@Alan:
Trust me, we’ll do fine without you.
Don’t forget to leave a touching GBCW on Facebook before you check out.
Alan
@morzer:
Because deciding what theft or destruction of property is is easy, and any government can do it and enforce laws against it. Deciding what’s hate speech is hard. I don’t want any government deciding what hate speech is. If I get upset at the Catholic church or even the more extreme Jewish sects, or any other religious or cultural group, I want to be able to express my beliefs. I don’t want to have to worry about being arrested like people do in England and Canada where they have hate speech laws.
Svensker
@J.D. Rhoades:
They are awful people, but it’s like getting mad at the schizo waving a sign on the street corner, you know the ones that are filled with very long messages in tiny neat letters that make no sense. They are nuts who only represent themselves — no one likes them or cares about them except when they introduce on someone’s grief, at which point they should be blocked.
fashionOfChrist
@Cacti:
WBC revoked their “moral high ground” when they started picketing funerals of fallen service members.
And I’m looking around for those Feds that are supposed to be showing up at my door *any second now* because I’ve openly engaged in making HTTP requests – which we all know is illegal.
Funny, they must be busy with real crimes.
morzer
@Alan:
You do realize that it actually takes quite a bit of “work” to get yourself arrested for hate speech in Britain or Canada? I hate to intrude facts into your libertarian martyrdom, but reality has some claim on us, after all.
You see, funnily enough, the thing you care about most in all of this is obviously property. So long as property is respected, free speech and protest can clearly go hang. Most of us can see the saving of the Koran was a legitimate gesture of free speech against hate speech – and yet you, the great arbiter and advocate of free speech, magically transform it into just another property crime. I find that very interesting, because it sheds a whole new light on your claims to value free speech so highly.
morzer
@Svensker:
How did the Jets get into this discussion?
Joking aside, how are ya, ya mumping villain?
Citizen Alan
@Alan:
And yet you believe that inciteful hate speech made attacking a deceased person at said person’s funeral with said person’s grieving family in attendance is protected speech? Even when said hate speech is obviously made not to present any legitimate point of view but merely to provoke a controversy so that the speaker can then sue the local government for violation of civil rights? Interesting.
Also, just wanted to clarify for the forum that this Alan isn’t that Alan. It always startles me when so guy with my name is on the internet saying things I with which I strongly disagree.
morzer
@Citizen Alan:
I know the feeling. Every time that bastard Bogdan Krapoffski opens his yap, I feel self-revulsion for at least half an hour.
Svensker
@Alan:
Agree with you completely here. I am personally happy that Anon is getting up in WBC’s stuff and shutting them down, but legally, I think it’s wrong.
And much as I loathe Koran burners, hurting someone’s feelings is not the same as injuring them in a criminal fashion.
Free speech can be quite offensive, but there’s a big difference between offensive and causing harm. That’s where the line is, at least so far as the govt should be concerned.
Alan
Alright, I’ll call it a day. Not sure if I’ve convinced anyone, but whatever. For those of you who still believe that it’s ok to physically or electronically or otherwise interfere with someone else’s speech because you don’t like what you’re saying, just try to think about where the line is. I assume none of you would support killing or bombing people. Some of you may have been offended when I brought up the idea of causing riots with billy clubs to disperse protests you don’t like, so I guess we can rule that out, or can we? But what else? Is anything else off the table?
Obviously you believe snatching implements of speech from people is ok. I guess that pastor just should have had a tighter grip on it, huh. Or maybe he should have had his own thugs protecting his speech.
What else is permissible? Most of you seem ok or ambivalent about shutting down a website. At least one of you believed that rushing the stage to prevent someone from giving a speech was ok. Is throwing a wrench into a printing press ok? Interfering with TV broadcasts? I guess burning down Fox news would be going too far, or is it? Is that morally different than shutting down the website? Snatching the koran away? What if nobody were hurt when you burned down Newscorp? Is it ok then? What if you secured a streetcorner for Hannity and Beck to do their shows from? Is it ok then that they no longer have a tv station? After all, they can still speak?
I think if you guys consider these questions, you’ll see that your arguments are taking you into places you don’t want to go to. I hope you agree that we as a society should not be going there also.
different church-lady
@Alan:
You’ve convinced me of quite a lot. I just don’t think it’s the kinda stuff you were trying to convince me of…
morzer
@Svensker:
But you assume that it stops at hurt feelings, and that isn’t always the case. It’s much too easy to assume that words and gestures don’t have meaningful consequences or a harmful impact.
fashionOfChrist
@Alan:
In a word: Yes
It’s called civil disobedience.
Keep licking those boots man.
nestor
@Alan:
You should volunteer to protect Pastor Phelps on all of his future outings.
Don’t forget to update us on twitter.
Ed Marshall
No Operation Westboro….
http://anonnews.org/?p=press&a=item&i=494
different church-lady
@Ed Marshall: Oh my goodness! It’s like a hall of mirrors!!!
Judas Escargot
@morzer:
Show me on the doll where Ayn Rand touched you.
This would make an excellent BJ tag.
Wintermute
@Alan – you’ve invalidated yourself. If you’re in favour of reasonable restrictions on speech, then you’re no longer in favour of free speech. Anything else you have to say on the matter can be safely ignored or discounted.
asiangrrlMN
@morzer: Agreed. I have no dog in this particular fight, but I’ve always been fascinated by free speech absolutists. I’m not one. I will freely admit that, so this whole thread has been enlightening. Especially as we see that in the case of politics, it’s always the responder who is called uncivil, unAmerican, whatever. Someone responding to homophobia is the one in the wrong. Someone responding to racism is the racist. Someone responding to misogyny is playing the gender card. I see shades of that in Alan’s arguments.
Plus, I agree with you that ‘just words’ and ‘just hurt feelings’ diminishes what can actually happen in these incidents.
And, I totally stand behind skaterboi. I think polyorchnid octopunch and you have it right. If burning the Qur’an is free speech, then taking it to prevent it from being burned is also free speech.
morzer
@asiangrrlMN:
Did you and ED Kain ever converse re: the LOOG?
asiangrrlMN
@morzer: Haahahhhahhahahha! You funny! You’re so mean to poor E.D.
morzer
@asiangrrlMN:
Actually, I like ED. I’ve defended him on here when many others didn’t. It really was a genuine inquiry.
Omnes Omnibus
@asiangrrlMN:
It absolutely is expressive conduct. Expressive conduct is speech. It may also be theft, but that is another matter entirely. Burning a flag is speech but doing so may violate other laws (e.g., fire codes, theft (depending on the ownership of the flag)).
asiangrrlMN
@morzer: I know. I just think that me and LOOGie would not be a good fit. I don’t enjoy arguing for the sake of arguing, and I cuss like a sailor. They need a Peggy Noonan of the left.
@Omnes Omnibus: Thanks. I like having you explain things to me because you don’t get all pompous and act like people who aren’t lawyers should never talk about the law.
Omnes Omnibus
@asiangrrlMN: Drink more.
morzer
@asiangrrlMN:
A Peggy Noonan of the Left?
You mean slightly drunk, permanently frustrated, and with delusions of prose style?
arguingwithsignposts
@morzer: How can AsiangrrlMN fit in with the league of ordinary *gentlemen*?
morzer
@arguingwithsignposts:
She writes well, argues intelligently, and would offer the challenge that ED Kain says he wants. I am sure a small matter of nomenclature wouldn’t be an irresolvable issue. Anyway, she’d look hawt in a false moustache….
asiangrrlMN
@Omnes Omnibus: No can drink. I iz allergic.
@morzer: But genteel! Always genteel! And, I would dress like this. A gentlewoman. But, no. I would bust out one ad hominem attack, and I’d be tossed. Or I’d call someone a wanker or a fucker or an ignoramus. I don’t brook much with intellectual masturbation.
arguingwithsignposts
@asiangrrlMN:
As long as you didn’t go all cudlip on them, apparently that would work. League of Ordinary Gentlefolk.
asiangrrlMN
@arguingwithsignposts: And, I am by no means ordinary, if I do say so myself.
I probably would be the first front-pager banned. Ha!
@arguingwithsignposts: I know! I was joking that I would troll as Lotus_Blossom and get banned. Then, m_c and I would have one thing in common.
morzer
@asiangrrlMN:
But think of the howls for attention from Matoko_chan. The fury, the pouting, the demands that ED give her equal time….
Oh how sweet is the rage of the foiled fuckwit!
morzer
@asiangrrlMN:
So, can we negotiate about the moustache?
asiangrrlMN
@morzer: Oh. mah. god. That’s almost a good enough reason for me to want to do it. Ha! Although, to be fair to her, she did make me laugh once this week by saying she knew I was this anime character (in a link) because of the’demon hentai grin’. Ha!
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
@Alan: O the hyperbole!
A general rule of thumb for the internet: Anyone who persists in arguing rights granted by the BoR can be violated by private actors is AT BEST just not bright enough to argue with.
morzer
@asiangrrlMN:
I keep hoping she did try and hack the Westboro Fascist Church website and got snared by the long arm of the law. Mind you, she’s such a klutz that she probably hacked some other innocent Baptist church in Kansas and is wondering why they keep talking about choir practice, who’s going to bring donuts, and how is your daddy’s back this week. The poor sap is probably sitting there with her magic decoder ring and a very bitter expression.
asiangrrlMN
@morzer: No. And, bwahahahahhaa on your other comment. Cudlip. This is the other acceptable look.
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen: You misunderstood. He is not talking about The Law. He just hopes that people will agree with him that we have a moral right not to impinge upon the free speech of others. Otherwise, he does not want to mingle amongst us.
Hm. Maybe I COULD fit in with the LOOGies!
Svensker
@morzer:
Aaar, not bad, ye old scurvy dog. Too bad about the sprogs, er, Dolphins. I be thinkin’ the Jets have got yon biscuit eaters marked with the black spot.
morzer
@Svensker:
Ah, if only our teams could find a real quarterback… still, it was rewarding to watch Brady dancing about futilely against you in the play-offs.
fashionOfChrist
Ed,
thanks again for the update.
looks like Anon finally posted a more or less *official* stand down order on the nooz web…
they can harvest my IP all they want.
Frankly I don’t even know what ISP I used ;)
Svensker
@morzer:
No, I’m not assuming anything. If nasty speech escalates to something beyond hurt feelings, then you have injury, which is criminally prosecutable. If we’re going to prosecute for hurt feelings, then the whole blogosphere would be shut down.
Canada has a “hurt feelings” anti-speech law. They’ve made it against the law to play Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing” in Canada because it uses anti-gay language (as a spoof, but apparently the moral speech police don’t get the joke). That’s what happens when you legislate “hurt feelings.”
Svensker
@morzer:
We got one. Too bad about your Chads.
morzer
@asiangrrlMN:
She was fine, that Marlene, that’s for sure. I suspect she would rather have died than been caught on camera stuffing A-Rod’s steroid-bloated features.
morzer
@Svensker:
Really? Who did you trade for?
morzer
@Svensker:
Really? Who did you trade for?
Svensker
@morzer:
Ba dum bum. Take my wife. Please.
morzer
@Svensker:
Ah, I fear my own wife, who has the fiery pride of the true Korean lass, would have a few words to say, if I accepted your kind offer. Still stuck with Sanchez, eh?
asiangrrlMN
@morzer: She would have just shoved it up his nose.
Bex
@MattF: Ben Stein? Andy Rooney? David Brooks? Mark Shields? Cokie Roberts? David Broder? George Will? Etc., etc., etc.? Why are ANY of them on TV at all? They should be in in a wax museum. At least there they couldn’t talk.
Another Commenter at Balloon Juice (fka Bella Q)
@morzer: If she does, that could be me. Except I will need to drink more, heh.
Catsy
@Scott:
Whether or not I agree with the substance of the argument, this line deserves to be quoted for awesomeness.
I now have a visual that is begging to be turned into Lego.
bago
But what if the robot velociraptor STOLE those chainsaws for his skateboard?
zuzu (not that one, the other one)
@Wintermute: There have always been restrictions on speech, usually called “time, place and manner” restrictions. It’s the fire-in-a-crowded-theater, no-child-porn, need-a-permit-to-march, no-swear-words-on-the-public-airwaves thing.
We don’t have, and never did have, 100% free speech. Government has always had some ability to impose “reasonable” restrictions such as the above. The bounds of reasonableness have been challenged and have shrunk over the years; it used to be you could get arrested for selling fairly tame books like “Lady Chatterly’s Lover,” but now anything other than child porn goes, even animal crush videos. And the child porn thing is usually justified because the act of filming is harmful to the child and is evidence of a crime.
As to the matter at issue: let me just state for the record that WBC and the Phelps clan (which are pretty much coterminous) are vile scum. Having said that, I can’t really get behind this Anonymous action — schadenfreudelicious as it is — for a couple of reasons.
One, I’m of the “I hate what you say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it” school of thought when it comes to the WBC. And while I know full well that this isn’t governmental action, Anonymous is justifying it because WBC has set themselves up as arbiters of speech.
Actually, WBC has supported itself by announcing that they’re coming to town to do something completely odious — such as picket the funeral of a servicemember, or a GLBT individual, or a child killed by an assassin — in the hopes that they will provoke a public outcry and, if they’re really lucky, some kind of government suppression of their speech. If that happens, they can sue for deprivation of their civil rights and collect their attorneys’ fees as part of the judgment or settlement. And since the WBC is represented by various members of the Phelps family, that money stays in the family, so to speak. There’s a reason they don’t ask the ACLU to represent them.
Then there’s the second reason, which is that I really question how effective any attack would be. The WBC operation is very, very small despite its outsize influence (kinda like Bill Donohue and the Catholic League, which is essentially Bill Donohue and a fax machine). While they may have a website, they may very well not conduct much of their business online or via email. This isn’t like an HB Gary or a Scientology, which are large, sophisticated, technology-dependent operations (and HB Gary had the additional embarrassment of holding themselves out as experts in cybersecurity). This is a bunch of religious fanatics who travel around in a bus and hold up cardboard signs. Their whole raison d’etre is publicity, and they can get that without a website. All they have to do is alert the media that they’re coming.
And if you did get into their computers, what would you find? If you’re lucky, you’d get some information on donors, maybe financial information. But the kind of stuff that would embarrass them and shame them into changing their ways? What could possibly embarrass someone who targets the funerals of children and people who were murdered to spread their message of hate? The only thing that cuts off their oxygen is inattention.