The Medico-Stalinist Tyranny at Work; Although BC Taxpayers Subsidize the Ferries, Woman who refused to wear face mask removed from Tsawwassen ferry by police
Delta police were called to the terminal late Wednesday morning for a woman causing a disturbance
CBC News · Posted: Nov 04, 2020 4:07 PM PT | Last Updated: November 4
A woman refusing to wear a face mask was removed from a BC Ferries vessel late Wednesday morning at Tsawwassen terminal. (Steve Lus/CBC)
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BC Ferries says a woman refusing to wear a face mask while on board a ferry set to depart the Tsawwassen terminal Wednesday morning had to be removed from the ship.
“A customer with a history of disruptive behaviour was causing a disturbance on board,” said BC Ferries spokesperson Astrid Chang.
Delta police confirm they were called to the terminal at 11 a.m. and escorted the woman to another location in Delta without issue.
The incident caused the ferry to be delayed by about one hour.
Delta police and BC Ferries did not release any other details.
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, BC Ferries has introduced a policy that all passengers must wear non-medical masks or face coverings when at terminals and on board ferries except:
When inside a vehicle.
When consuming food or drinks, provided physical distancing is maintained.
Children under two years of age.
When a medical condition or disability inhibits the ability to wear a mask.
Persons unable to place or remove a mask without assistance.
BC Ferries employees working behind a physical barrier or within employee-only areas, provided physical distancing is maintained.
Kootenay Co-op has seen increase in aggressive customers who refuse to wear mask since provincial mandate
CBC News · Posted: Nov 24, 2020 7:27 AM PT | Last Updated: November 24
A security guard has been hired at the Kootenay Co-op for the first time in the store’s 45-year history. (Bob Keating/CBC)
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For the first time in its 45 years, a grocery store in downtown Nelson, B.C., has hired a security guard — and it’s not to watch out for shoplifters.
Their job is to head off a growing increase in aggressive behaviour among some shoppers who refuse to wear a mask in the store, since the province announced last Thursday that face coverings are now mandatory in all retail spaces in a bid to control the spread of COVID-19.
Ari Derfel, store manager of the Kootenay Co-op, says while most customers have followed the new regulations, about 10 to 20 per cent of them are refusing to wear a mask and become confrontational when asked to do so.
“Their way of expressing [their argument] can be really aggressive, confrontational and mean to the point that they sometimes try to force themselves into the store without a mask,” Derfel told CBC reporter Bob Keating.
“They speak in really demeaning, negative, critical ways to some of our staff and our cashiers.”
Some members of staff have broken down in tears and even quit as a result of the vitriol, he said.
Store manager Ari Derfel says he hopes the presence of a security guard will mean some people think twice about trying to get into the store without a mask or abusing staff when they’re denied entry. (Bob Keating/CBC)
Leannah Fidler, who has worked at the Kootenay Co-op for five years, says she has never seen her workplace like the pressure-cooker environment it is now.
“We’re getting a lot of pushback from folks that either don’t really believe that [COVID-19] is a real thing, or don’t believe that masks are an appropriate way to combat it,” she said.
Assistant manager Shannon McAllister is pleading with customers to end the verbal abuse toward her staff.
“At the end of the day, we’re all just people and we’re all trying to do our best and do our jobs,” she told Chris Walker, host of CBC’s Daybreak South.
“Especially people that are working in retail and grocery stores and restaurants … [they’re] doing so at their own risk to provide that service for our community.”
Some members of staff at the Kootenay Co-op in Nelson, B.C., have broken down in tears and even quit as a result of the vitriol, the store’s manager said. (Bob Keating/CBC)
Most shoppers like regular customer Reiko Fujibayashi, who worked at the store for 10 years, have no problem masking up.
“I don’t understand why people would personalize something that’s a mandate,” she said.
Derfel hopes the presence of a security guard will mean some people think twice about trying to get into the store without a mask or abusing staff when they’re denied entry.
CAFE says: Stop bossing people around. They’re keeping your business afloat by shopping there.
The Ontario Civil Liberties Association has received documentation from Ontario lawyer Aaron Rosenberg showing that Amazon interfered with and repeatedly deplatformed his client’s book.
The book is “China Virus: How Justin Trudeau’s Pro-Communist Ideology is Putting Canadians in danger”, by Ezra Levant of Rebel News.
Amazon is enabled by State corporate laws to in-effect operate as a book publishing monopoly.
Amazon benefits from corporate law by tax advantages and by shielding its executives and board members from personal liability.
Amazon occupies the internet, thus using internet facilities that have been largely created with public money. The internet is a publicly-funded shared resource, from landlines following rail and road networks, to university hubs, and so on. The very architecture of the internet is from publicly-funded intellectual efforts.
Corporations, such as Amazon, are free to be independent in their corporate strategy and functioning. However, non-specialized monopolistic online publishers and social media giants, because of their fundamental and government-enabled societal role in giving individuals a voice to participate in democracy and to express themselves freely, with equal access, should not violate the constitutional, Charter, democratic, political, and natural freedom-of-expression rights of authors and readers, arbitrarily or by contract.
Blocking YouTube channels and banning books on Amazon are akin to requiring government authorisation to operate a printing press or to buy a photocopier or pen and paper. Only the technology and the administrative covering structures have changed. Establishment censorship is establishment censorship.
Amazon is applying the correct principle of free expression in publishing the historically influential works of Mao, Hitler, Che Guevara, Karl Marx, Errico Malatesta, Adam Smith, and many others, but it is applying outright censorship against current works that it deems threatens the dominant establishment projects of the moment.
OCLA has noticed an aggressive censorship of influential works that potentially threaten the current global state of medical totalitarianism. “Public health risk” is being wielded as a ready-made pretext for deplatforming and censorship. This is obscene. There must be free expression, whether establishment structures have declared a pandemic or not. There must especially be free expression when the government is enacting draconian measures, such as a global lockdown and forcing individuals to wear masks, no less. Everyone must have a voice. Everyone is impacted by unprecedented (we argue reckless[1]) government actions.
It appears that Ezra Levant’s book may have been captured by the medical totalitarian net. Whatever the actual reasons for Amazon’s egregious violation of Mr. Levant’s free expression, and of the rights of his readers, the actions of Amazon are wrong and harmful to society.
Dave Lindsay Organizer of Kelowna rally against COVID-19 restrictions issued $2.3K fine — The Medico-Stalinist Tyranny at Work
Fine was issued for acting in contravention of provincial health orders, RCMP say
CBC News · Posted: Dec 13, 2020 12:48 PM PT | Last Updated: 2 hours ago
About 1,000 people attended a rally in Kelowna, B.C., on Saturday against provincial health restrictions intended to curb the spread of COVID-19. (Brady Strachan/CBC)
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RCMP have issued a $2,300 fine against the organizer of a rally against COVID-19 restrictions that took place Saturday afternoon in downtown Kelowna, B.C.
The fine was issued for acting in contravention of provincial health orders meant to curb the spread of the virus, which includes a prohibition on public gatherings, police said in a statement.
“People in Canada have a democratic right to a lawful and peaceful protest and the RCMP must use discretion when balancing a citizen’s rights with the current potential health risks associated to large public gatherings,” RCMP said.
The rally crossed several busy roadways in downtown Kelowna. Officers were on hand to prevent confrontations between the protesters and nearby residents and motorists, RCMP added.
CBC News reporters who witnessed the rally estimated approximately 1,000 people were gathered. The protesters held up signs that said “open our churches” and “stand up for freedom.”
RCMP said they are not releasing the name of the organizer at this time.
In a statement, Kelowna RCMP Supt. Kara Triance said most people have been respecting the public health orders.
“While we certainly can, and will enforce the provisions available to us under the COVID Related Measures Act, we continue to encourage everyone to voluntarily comply with the provincial health orders, so enforcement is not required,” she said.
Mark Donnelly — The Latest Victim of the Medico-Stalinist Tyrants & Their Corporate Collaborators: ‘O Canada’ singer addresses firing by Vancouver Canucks at anti-mask rally http://cafe.nfshost.com/?p=5169
Social Sharing
Mark Donnelly sang anthem at Christmas Freedom Rally in Vancouver on Saturday
The Canadian Press · Posted: Dec 06, 2020 9:27 AM PT | Last Updated: December 6
Mark Donnelly at the Vancouver Art Gallery on Saturday, where people gathered to protest COVID-19 restrictions. A day earlier, the Vancouver Canucks said over Twitter that Donnelly would no longer be singing the national anthem before the NHL club’s games. (CBC News)
The popular singer of ‘O Canada’ at Vancouver Canucks hockey games says he knew he might lose his job for standing up against what he describes as the “tyranny” of COVID-19 restrictions.
Mark Donnelly sang the national anthem at an event called the Christmas Freedom Rally in Vancouver on Saturday, where hundreds of people protested restrictions imposed by British Columbia’s provincial health officer.
Vancouver Canucks owner Francesco Aquilini tweeted late Friday that Donnelly was now the former Canucks anthem singer, followed by the Twitter hashtag #wearamask.
Donnelly told the crowd, many of whom weren’t wearing masks or physically distancing, that he decided to sing because he questions the “draconian lockdown protocols.”
“What was originally sold as a 15-day hunkering-down sprint for the common good has turned into a 10-month marathon from hell, where the finish line is constantly being moved further into the distance,” he said.
Donnelly said he doesn’t think health officials have done a cost-benefit analysis looking at the harms of the restrictions compared with preventing the spread of COVID-19.
“As someone known for singing our great national anthem, I’m standing up against what I feel is tyranny, plain and simple,” he said to applause and cheers from the crowd.
Donnelly sings O Canada at a rally against provincially mandated COVID-19 restrictions on Saturday in Vancouver. (CBC News)
Donnelly described his firing as censorship by an institution that he’s followed for 50 years and been publicly associated with since 2001.
“Sports figures, entertainers, politicians, et cetera, can stand for anything as long as it supports the narrative. You can support rioting, looting, destruction of livelihoods and reputation, but take a position against the narrative and you are worthy of exile or worse.”
Donnelly said he hasn’t had direct contact with Aquilini or the Canucks and that if he is no longer with the team, a phone call would have been a more respectful way to find out his reasons for taking part in the rally.
He said he had hoped the ownership and management of the Canucks would have had the “courage to support the freedom to express [a] science-based position that is for the greater good of the country.”
‘Follow the provincial health orders’
On Saturday, Canucks COO Trent Carroll said in a statement that the organization hoped that people understood that Donnelly was not representing the team with his views.
“Mark Donnelly is acting independently,” the statement said.
“We encourage everyone to wear a mask and to follow the provincial health orders. They are in place to help everyone in B.C. to stop COVID-19 from spreading in our province.”
Hundreds of people gather outside the Vancouver Art Gallery on Saturday to attend an event called the Christmas Freedom Rally, to protest against pandemic restrictions, such as wearing face masks. (CBC News)
After listening to speeches on Saturday at the Vancouver Art Gallery, the protesters then took to the streets in a march.
Vancouver police spokesperson Tania Visintin said police need to exercise discretion with large groups of protesters violating public health orders, saying public safety is the priority.
She said mass arrests or ticketing could escalate an already tense situation.
“This position does not automatically guarantee anyone special privileges at a protest. The bottom line is people who are contravening the public health order, they could be issued a ticket. Officers are using discretion with each situation that arises.”
B.C. Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said last month that she has “no time for people who believe that wearing a mask somehow makes them ill or is a sign of lack of freedom.”
Instead, she said, wearing a mask is about respect for those who are suffering through the pandemic together.
WATCH | Dr. Bonnie Henry critical of people who refuse to wear masks over ‘lack of freedom’:
Dr. Bonnie Henry denounces people who refuse to wear masks over ‘lack of freedom’
18 days agoVideo1:02B.C.’s provincial health officer says wearing masks is a sign of respect. 1:02
[I very much hope my readers take the challenge here seriously and start posing this question to lockdown supporters. It would be very interesting to know how they would respond. Would the realization that there is apparently nothing the government can do in the name of slowing the bat flu that would be too far in their estimation finally cause them to snap to about how dangerous that way of thinking is?Enjoy,Gerry T. Neal]
Rod Dreher is a writer who blogs at the website of The American Conservative, the magazine founded by Pat Buchanan, Taki Theodoracopulos and Scott McConnell in 2002 to oppose the foreign policy of the George W. Bush administration and more specifically the drive for war in Iraq from the right. Dreher is also the author of such books as Crunchy Cons (2006), How Dante Can Save Your Life (2015), The Benedict Option (2017), and most recently, Live Not By Lies which was released earlier this year. The last title mentioned warns small-o orthodox Christians – Dreher, who was raised Protestant, became a Roman Catholic and is now Eastern Orthodox with a large-O – about the coming “soft totalitarianism” to which wokeness, the more militant successor to political correctness, is leading the Western world. Note that there are many who would generally agree with Dreher’s assessment of wokeness but suggest that a past tense would be more appropriate than a future one.
Earlier this year, Dreher posted a piece entitled “Your Woke Breaking Point” at his blog. He began with an excerpt from an article by Megan McArdle at the Washington Post about how Donald Trump’s predictions of four years ago as to how the attacks on Confederate monuments would lead to attacks on monuments to the American republic’s founders, such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, were coming true. McArdle, in her editorial, referenced Dreher’s “Law of Merited Impossibility” which has been stated several different ways, the best known being “It will never happen, and when it does you bigots will deserve it”. The law satirizes, without exaggerating in the least, the paradox of the typical progressive response to conservative warnings about the direction in which left-wing causes seem to be heading, before and after the predictions are fulfilled. It is likely to end up being Dreher’s single most significant and lasting contribution to political discourse. McArdle’s article referencing it was an uncharacteristic moment of liberal self-criticism, in which she discussed the progressive side’s seeming inability to restrain its radicals and apply the brakes when they are going too far and too fast.
Dreher used the excerpt from McArdle’s article to introduce a challenge that he borrowed from mathematician James A. Lindsay. Lindsay had tweeted on the 24th of June:
Talking with a brilliant friend last night keyed me into an important idea: everybody has a Woke breaking point, a point where they can’t deny any longer the fact that it’s a totalitarian nightmare. Encourage your sympathetic friends to start naming what theirs would be.
Dreher re-posted Lindsay’s tweet and several follow-up tweets, the first of which went:
Whose statue has to come down? Seriously, whose is the last straw? Who has to get cancelled? Fired? Doxxed? Destroyed? Beaten up? Killed? Does it take a lynching? Does it take destroying the thing YOU love? Your family? Your kids? Your job? Your hobby? What is it? What’s too far?
It is an excellent question and one that we would do well to pose to any liberals of our acquaintance. What do the Social Justice Warriors – the BLM, Antifa and MeToo# types — have to do before you will admit that they have gone too far?
There is a very similar question that I would suggest we start posing to people. Or perhaps it is the same question asked in a different context.
This question I would pose to all those people who think that all the public health orders, all the restrictions imposed to control the spread of the Wuhan bat flu, are necessary and especially to those who think that even more restrictions are called for. I will note, obiter dictum, that Rod Dreher himself was certainly one of these back in the spring. Whether he still is or not I am unaware because he has written far less on that subject in recent months than in March, April and May.
The question is simply this – what is your Bat Flu Breaking Point?
Let us clarify the matter with some follow up questions.
What do our public health officials have to do for you to agree that they have gone too far? What line do they have to cross? What freedom do they have to take away? How much imposed loneliness, isolation, and misery is too much? How many small businesses have to be destroyed? How many people have to lose their jobs? How many people have to be driven to suicide, drunkenness and substance abuse? At what point is keeping us safe no longer worth the price we are being forced to pay for it?
Would curtailing to the point of eliminating our basic freedoms of association, assembly and religion be going too far?
Would telling people that they have to close the small businesses that has been in their families and served their local communities for generations and which they have been struggling to keep afloat for years right in the busiest shopping time of the year, the period that they rely upon to make enough to balance their books, be crossing the line?
Would fining people thousands of dollars for acts that are not only not mala in se but are rather clearly bona in se although forbidden by some petty health order be one step too many in the direction of totalitarianism?
Would opening a snitch line and encouraging people to rat out their family, friends and neighbours be the straw that breaks the camel’s back?
Would establishing a special police force – a Gestapo, Cheka/NKVD, or Stasi so to speak – for enforcing public health orders be the limit of what is tolerable?
Everything I have mentioned so far has already been done here in Manitoba and, indeed, in most if not all of the other provinces of the Dominion of Canada. For the many who support all of these measures and say they are “necessary” it is difficult to imagine what further step could possibly be taken that would finally have these people saying that it is too much.
Would it take forcing everybody to have foreign substances, including modified RNA, injected into their bodies upon penalty of not being allowed to work, buy groceries, or go anywhere if they refuse?
Would even telling everyone that they must pledge their allegiance to Satan by having 666 tattooed on their right hand or forehead in order to stop the spread of COVID-19 finally be enough to do it?
Free Speech But not for Those Who Question the New Secular Religion of “holocaust” –Top German jurist explains why ‘holocaust deniers’ of any age must be punished — With Commentary by Carolyn Yaeger
Published by carolyn on Thu, 2020-12-10 00:48
Lüge und Wahrheit
(Lie and Truth)
A column by Thomas Fischer
Thomas Fischer, born in 1953, is a noted German jurist of the 2nd Criminal Senate of the Federal Court of Justice. Fischer is the presiding judge of the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe. His annual commentary on the Penal Code, “Beck’s Short Commentaries,” is considered the Bible of German Criminal Law. He is a honorary professor at the University of Würzburg lecturing on criminal law, criminal trial law and the sociology of law. In 2017, he was selected for that year’s European Press Prize shortlist.Through his weekly column “Fischer im Recht” on ZEIT ONLINE, Thomas Fischer has become a familiar name to a broad nationwide audience.
EXCEPT THAT HE DOESN’T explain it. His long-winded commentary is long on empty rhetoric, short on compelling reason. I decided to post this opinion piece “Lie and Truth” that was published recently by Spiegel to give you a chance to see for yourself the haphazard discourse that passes for the voice of wisdom in German constitutional law. This man is a disgrace, not only because he is grossly obese (which makes it hard to even look at him), but because he is politically motivated and not above resorting to lies and baseless insults against his fellow Germans, whose legitimate questions he cannot honestly answer. See for yourself. Note that I have added a few of my own comments in red. -cy
Anyone who publicly or in an assembly approves, denies or trivializes an act committed under the rule of National Socialism in the manner described in § 6 para. 1 of the International Criminal Code in a manner likely to disturb the public peace, either publicly or in an assembly, shall be punished by imprisonment for up to five years or by a fine.
[CY – To understand this, I found Article 6 of the Int. Criminal Code, which reads:
Article 6: Individual Criminal Responsibility
1. A person who planned, instigated, ordered, committed or otherwise aided and abetted in the planning, preparation or execution of a crime referred to in Articles 2 to 4 of the present Statute, shall be individually responsible for the crime.]
__________________________
Many call that which is subsequently punished [under § 130] an “Auschwitz lie. Those who commit one of the acts, that is, approve, deny, or trivialize the Holocaust, on the other hand, call it an “Auschwitz lie” to claim that the Holocaust took place on the generally known [substitute ‘believed’] scale. The reasonable argue with the mad, the truthtellers with the liars, about the right to the word “lie.” Of course, no one can win this fight on the battlefield of counter-arguments, which makes both sides all the more bitter the more important the word fetishes with which they throw at each other are to them.
There is not the slightest doubt that the earth is a sphere and not a tray, that it orbits around the sun and not the sun around Venus, that stones fall down because masses have gravity, and that in and by the leading state of the NSDAP tens of millions of people have been murdered for reasons that were called “racial” and are now called “racist,” because this word is somehow better and truer, since on the one hand there are no human “races” at all, but on the other hand the racists are called that way because they claim it, mostly connected with the courageous thesis that they themselves belong to the better, more beautiful, and in any case somehow more valuable “race” by lucky providence. [Did you follow that long sentence? Try again if necessary. He’s making a false analogy between ‘flat-earthers’ and ‘racists.’ There is no connection.] That, one may think, is then nevertheless stupid; one must decide. Purely humanly seen, it is understandable and touching, and not really surprising, that one’s own sand castle seems to one as the most beautiful, one’s own nose as the most delicate, and one’s own stupidity as the most significant. Of course, the fun ends when one draws the conclusion that one is in league with nature and the spirit of the world when one smashes other people’s noses. [As you will notice as you read on, he takes cheap swipes and uses insults very liberally, in place of any kind of valid point.]
What the truth is, the whole, real, immovable, and by what one can recognize it, is a quite old question. It is a part of human nature, although it deals with it only in passing. Dogs, cats and monkeys do not fight over the truth, because everything is reality to them and memory is only one form of it. Humans long for it when they walk on dream paths. But we have to live with the brain that we have and with the environment that we are. The truth is, once we leave aside the very great sources of truth, all of them located in the beyond or in concepts, which have been invented over the millennia and which are all characterized by the fact that theyrenounce any reality outside of themselves,a common, socially related reconstruction of reality influenced by evaluations, symbols and prognoses.It depends on them when more than one person is present, that is, practically always with the exception of the state of “delusions”. He never tells us what the truth is. This last appears to be gobbledygook to me. Try as I might, I can’t make sense of it.
Because this is so, truth is of such great importance for well-being. One could say: It is completely indifferent whether the Thirty Years’ War has taken place or whether the Elbe flows between Dresden and Hamburg even when we are sleeping or standing on the Rhine. Truth about the past is existentially important because it is an understanding of the present (reality).
Punishment and truth
I mention all this to give you the idea that prosecuting for denial of the obvious truth is a problematic matter. Here we go – truth is not defined, instead it is “obvious.” Criminal law has, after all, historically worked its way from the outside to the inside, so to speak: From the control of external behavior ever closer to the control of internal self-control and thinking. Since 500 years ago, God as the only instance of truth was shifted from the real world to a transcendent beyond. The rational control of reality was taken over by everyone in the world of absolutism [being] allowed to be happy in his own way, as long as he took care of it inwardly and adhered to the 19,000 paragraphs of the General Prussian Land Law outwardly. Nowadays we see it differently: we want the citizen to guide himself morally, so criminal law also has its sights set on his thoughts and feelings the “Gesinnung” [attitude] is worth a lot to us, and anyone who shoots at a person with a wooden toy gun because he mistakenly believes it to be real will be put in prison for life for attempted murder. Is this not nuts? How do you prove what he believes? How can you punish an attitude?
In addition, however, what constitutes freedom and makes human development possible has to assert itself. Optimized mind control leads, as has been proven many times, to blatantly dysfunctional societies, no matter under which “ideological,” irrational beliefs. So it depends – once again – on a balance between conflicting conditions, circumstances, tendencies and possibilities: as much as possible alignment by controlling a common “truth” on the one hand – and on the other hand as much freedom as possible for truth-expanding realities. Such a balance requires the form and these binding concepts of oneself. Somewhat easier: one must find forms of balance.
If one looks around in the world of criminal law, one finds many legal systems in which truth is acted [?] as a high object of protection, especially gladly the truth about the greatness of one’s own state history, about the tremendous victories of the respective leaders and the wickedness of all its opponents, about the quasi-historical necessity of rule as it is and will be forever. One can believe that or not. Some feel secure in such forms, especially when they are not among the lowest, but have even more contemptible ones among them.
In states that are called liberal constitutional states, it is more complicated, but much more pleasant: one may think what one wants, but in addition to the rules of external conduct, one must understand halfway the construction itself and pay attention to the functioning of social truth-finding. In Germany, the pure doctrine of truthfulness is not enforced by the Bundeswehr, but by rule-based public communication. This is the reason why the Federal Constitutional Court describes the basic right of freedom of opinion as “absolutely constitutive”.
Therefore it is actually rather remote that one protects “the truth” criminally and pursues the spreading of lies as attack on the truth. If this were to be taken literally, it would be the very opposite of what is “absolutely constitutive.” However: The spreading of panic by public threat of attacks is punishable even if the threat is not meant seriously (see § 126 StGB); the spreading of contents with glorification of inhuman cruelty is also punishable if the victims depicted are only “human-like” (see § 131 StGB), and everyone has a right, protected by criminal law, to have slander (incorrect factual claims) that do not violate their reputation and destroy their existence, spread (see §§ 186, 187 StGB). The truth about the past is thus protected to the extent that it is the basis of present life. Exactly. In order to prevent political National Socialism from reappearing, they must lie about it and criminalize it (the past) to “protect” the future. If two sections of the population claim that it is the “truth” that different gods have ordered them to destroy each other, one must not protect the truth but prevent civil war. One way to do this would be to prohibit the public dissemination of the aforementioned feeble-minded “truths”. Now truths that don’t protect their version of public peace become “feeble-minded truths.”
§ 130 – “Incitement of the people” – protects in the end, of course, body, life, existence of humans. This protection is, however, shifted forward here, because conditions are to be prevented in which it can no longer be guaranteed by the general rules (for example, prohibition of manslaughter and bodily injury). Hate against groups of the population, calls for violence, threats to security are, as history has shown a thousand times, dangerous acts. “Incitement of the people” is a so-called abstract crime of danger, which punishes attacks on the so-called public peace, i.e. a state in which the form of compensation is based on rules and not on violence and arbitrariness.
This brings us to the denial of the Holocaust, which is a variant of the crime of sedition. Of course, one can say: Whether any fools “believe” that the Holocaust of National Socialism did not take place is completely indifferent. For the world and for the truth this is no more significant than the view of some others that the world is ruled by aliens or was founded by Martians. These latter opinions would not be insignificant, however, if their followers were to call for the earth to be prepared for the return of the masters from space and, until then, for the slaughter of the elites or the burning of all forests. In other words: The truth about the Holocaust is not the core, but the medium of public peace, which § 130 paragraph 3 StGB wants to protect. This is all utter nonsense.
So much for the background of the penal provision. It does not change anything about the fact that § 130 Abs. 3 StGB is also a completely normal criminal provision: One must, in order to be punished, [word missing?] the objective (action) and the subjective (resolution) facts of the case. And what the intent of “denial” is, is not self-evident and also not indisputable. Very important.
Some people say: intent to deny already exists when the perpetrator knows that he denies something. Others – the “prevailing opinion” – say that premeditation presupposes that the perpetrator knows that his view of past reality contradicts the view of everyone else. Still others – for example, the columnist in his StGB commentary – say: Denial in the sense of § 130 (3) presupposes that the perpetrator knows or accepts that his assertion contradicts reality, i.e., is untrue. (Only) this latter view leads to the problem that people who do not know this are in a state of so-called “error of fact”, i.e. they cannot be punished (see § 16 para. 1 StGB). This is not a practically relevant problem because 99 percent of the “deniers” of course know full well that the Holocaust really took place, but feign their “disbelief” because they actually approve (or even would like to repeat) the genocide. Shockingly untrue!! Indefensible attitude from a judge, an unsupported assumption and CHEAP SHOT that has never been fairly demonstrated in any courtroom! That such persons can be punished according to § 130 is self-evident. Then one could, under certain circumstances, leave the few idiots who really believe that the earth is a piece of paper in their sad delusion alone. It is obvious that this is not quite so simple: How do you want to distinguish the real from the delusional liars?
Punishment and symbol
This brings us to Mrs. Haverbeck and comrades, including Mr. Horst Mahler or the (probably: former) fiancée and defense attorney of the same [Sylvia Stolz], who used their pleas to announce the death penalty to the judges. What death penalty? There are simply such people, and in their shadow quite a number of them, who hide around with half-baked swollen sympathies and ostensibly agnostic excuses: they only deny secretly and among their own kind. Unwarranted insult toward Haverbeck, Mahler and Stolz; more hate from the respected judge.
The decisive point here, too, is probably that the perpetrators are not concerned with “the truth” as scientific reality: they do not spend their lives researching whether Caesar really spoke with Brutus when he murdered him, or whether Cleopatra used to bathe in milk or champagne before meeting Antonius. Her [referring to Frau Haverbeck] center of truth is hyperexcited at only one point: Holocaust or non-Holocaust? Were there six million or perhaps only 5.8 million murdered? This alone shows that it is not about numbers, but about principle: the allegedly wrong view of the general public is for these persuaders of conviction proof and symbol of the alleged “wrong” opinion about National Socialism, which they consider to be a great thing by and large. The fight for the alleged truth is thus a fight not for past reality, but for the social and political future. Agitation against the alleged lie about Auschwitz is in reality agitation against Jews, Sinti and Roma, foreigners.
There is no reason not to punish perpetrators of conviction. To have any “conviction” is allowed, pleasant or not, and first of all a private matter. But he who “by conviction” murders, humiliates, hurts other people, must be made clear the boundary between mine and his actions. But they can’t prove the necessary extent of the murder, humiliation and hurt. It’s an arbitary claim and number. At the same time the sanctioning must show the others – that is, all – that this limit exists and that it must be observed. This too is “symbolic”. One could take the view that perpetrators like Ms. Haverbeck should not be offered further stages of self-representation in court through criminal prosecution. I think that would be too cheap an argument, on the edge of convenience. After all, criminal trials and main hearings do not have the task of protecting the public from becoming aware of crimes. Even those who, as accused, announce that they will make physical attacks during the trial will not be released, but rather tied up. Admittedly, one must not do the same with notorious agitators. In exceptional cases, however, they can be excluded, otherwise one must and can bear the gossip. As long as there is still a spark of legal defense underneath, one must listen and give the accused a chance. Nothing more. This applies equally to Haverbecks, holy warriors and other human happiness seekers.
Punishment and age
Should (very) old people be prosecuted and punished, even imprisoned? This is a question that is repeatedly asked in public, but surprisingly hardly ever in the case of jealousy killers, child rapists or terrorists. But especially with old Nazi criminals who lived “blamelessly” in hiding for 70 years and who were dragged out of the hiding places of their memories at the end of their lives. One might ask whether old people in wheelchairs are still the right addressees of the messages of criminal law. Counter question: Why not?
That applies in any case to such offenders who are still criminally active even at an advanced age. Anyone who, at the age of 92 and full of zest for action, strides from one sedition to the next will probably still be sprightly enough to bear responsibility for it. An 85-year-old man, who notoriously abuses children sexually, will not be able to argue, with any prospect of success, that at his age a criminal trial is no longer worthwhile; it would be better to let it go. Always equating holocaust revisionists with sexual abusers of children! They are not similar in any way.
It may be different when it concerns deeds that are a whole human life behind. Murder and genocide do not come under the statute of limitations: that is how it is, and that is what the majority of the population obviously wants. Hardly anyone complains that it is possible to solve 50-year-old sexual murders with the help of DNA analysis: “cold cases” are considered a very special treat for the daily horror. When the love of justice and the statute of limitations is so great, one should not exclude the ramp of Auschwitz, of all places.
There are limits to the ability to negotiate and to execute. But they are very wide: not because German criminal law is so merciless and inhuman, but because the well-being of prisoners is quite well taken care of, at least in physical terms. There are many old people living in prison today, many are chronically ill, quite a few die there from cancer, cardiovascular diseases, Aids. There are departments for old prisoners, prison hospitals and, if necessary, the possibility of external medical care. One should think about the penal system as a whole, without doubt. But the majority of citizens obviously do not want that at all. To open a media-public department for “mercy” instead would seem to me to make little sense and be extremely unfair. One could think of a few prisoners who perhaps deserved mercy more than highly active hate mongers. This is how he pretends he sees Ursula, as a hate monger rather than as a constitutionally protected German citizen. This allows him to stay in his judicial comfort zone. As a rule, one cannot choose whether one dies of lung cancer. Whether one simply keeps one’s mouth shut, yes.
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So there is the legal answer to all who question the Dictate of eternal German guilt for the Holocaust: Shut up or we’ll shut you up.
BREAKING: @hudsonsbay is taking the @fordnation government to court over their lockdown of retail in Toronto and Peel calling the government’s measures “unreasonable and unfair.” Company says they have been left with no choice but to go to court.
