Old Hippy
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it is worth noting that in the recent debate to repeal 18C in the name of free speech, a lot of people never read section 18D...
Spoiler :
The hell is wrong with you, Catalonia?!
- Thread starter Yeekim
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it is worth noting that in the recent debate to repeal 18C in the name of free speech, a lot of people never read section 18D...
Nothing to see here, keep moving.
In Spain, like in most European countries there are a number of cases where the onus probandi (sorry for the latinism) is on the defendant. For instance in patent law or commerce law. In some cases of discrimination and sexual abuse too. However such inversion cant EVER be applied if we are speaking about a criminal case, such thing would be inconstitutional and then this law would be revoked by the Spanish Constitutional Court, since catalonia is still in Spain till proved otherwise...
But technically since the punishment is a fine and not imprisonment, any case prosecuted under this new law would not be considered a criminal case, but a civil one, thus immune to the "no criminal case must have the defendant prove their innocence" thing. At least that's the loophole I see.
Brazil is a Western country under any definition of the term. 100% of the population speaks an European language, it is predominantly Catholic with a growing Protestant minority, culturally very close to Portugal. What exactly is non-Western about it? Too many brown people? In this case the USA is about to lose its Western status, if it hasn't already.
And the fact that restrictions on free speech are common in other Western countries only reinforced my point. You will note that it is the left that pushed for those restrictions, and continues to push to make them harder.
Old Hippy
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if your blaming the left, then you also have to congratulate them for putting in place the exceptions for those same laws...
like the ones I mentioned just two posts back.
Spoiler :
and it is important to distinguish between racial hatred and free speech, they are not the same thing...
Congratulate them for not making their censorship as restrictive as it could be? I don't think so. I'll take no censorship. That's like saying I should congratulate the people wanting to abolish presumption of innocence because they're not advocating for the summary execution of suspected homophobes.
And racial hatred is a bit of a fuzzy concept, no? What is racial hatred? Saying "kill everybody from race X" clearly is and is already illegal anywhere. Saying "race X is inferior" is an opinion, however wrong or even hateful, and shouldn't be illegal.
Old Hippy
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yes it is a fuzzy concept for some, (germany 1939), but most of these laws, if not all of them actually allow you to say x is inferior because reasons...
it just needs to be artistic or scientific debate and fair comment in the public interest, providing they are said and done reasonably and in good faith,
putting up posters by night on shop windows and vilefying people because of their race or sexuality dos not meet these standards, as is paying someone to distribute vile papers throughout the subburb just before an election (it happens) that vilifies someone on race or sexuality
between the two extremes i just mentioned, I really wonder what needs free speech has that are not met by the first bolded part...
remebering that the law and courts recognize that the conduct must involve “profound and serious” effects, not “mere slights”
and to blame the left again forgets that the were in support of removing blasphemy laws, some as late as 1991, so yes again it is a fuzzy area.
Akka
Moody old mage.
I'm happy to say that, for once, I'll agree wholeheartily.
I'm only going to make an exception about positive discrimination for disabled people (and maybe a few special cases like that), who are among the only ones who really need it.
classical_hero
In whom I trust
I'm just curious, then why did Andrew Bolt get charged under this law if section 18D is meant to protect "matters of public interest"?
Old Hippy
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get the full judement here...
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-09-28/bolt-found-guilty-of-breaching-discrimination-act/3025918
"I will never get an apology from Mr Bolt. He made that clear giving his evidence earlier in the year," she said outside court.
"But we will, I hope, get some sort of acknowledgment through the press that what he wrote was just unacceptable, totally unacceptable. He set out to offend from the word go and in fact he acknowledged that in his evidence."
''Today Federal Court Justice Mordecai Bromberg found Bolt had breached the act because the articles were not written in good faith and contained factual errors."
''I have notfound Mr Bolt and the Herald & Weekly Times to have contravened section 18C,simply because the newspaper articles dealt with subject matter of that kind. I have found a contravention of the Racial Discrimination Act because of the manner in which that subject matter was dealt with.''
I remember it well, it is the local paper, and there was a time I like his provocative stlye...
but he did go after those people on racial grounds, and had the nerve to deny it in court, he did not justify any matters of public interest except the fact that people should not work for aboriginal organisations if they tend to be on the white side of the colour spectrum...
he could have written the same articles without vilefying people, but choose instead to go after individule prominant aboriginal people,(18 from memory) why, well he is Bolt, and apparently one of the people that reads 18C but not 18D
and now he has aTV programe as well
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-09-28/bolt-found-guilty-of-breaching-discrimination-act/3025918
Chief plaintiff Ms Eatock said she was not holding out hope of an apology from Mr Bolt.
"I will never get an apology from Mr Bolt. He made that clear giving his evidence earlier in the year," she said outside court.
"But we will, I hope, get some sort of acknowledgment through the press that what he wrote was just unacceptable, totally unacceptable. He set out to offend from the word go and in fact he acknowledged that in his evidence."
''Today Federal Court Justice Mordecai Bromberg found Bolt had breached the act because the articles were not written in good faith and contained factual errors."
''I have notfound Mr Bolt and the Herald & Weekly Times to have contravened section 18C,simply because the newspaper articles dealt with subject matter of that kind. I have found a contravention of the Racial Discrimination Act because of the manner in which that subject matter was dealt with.''
Spoiler :
I remember it well, it is the local paper, and there was a time I like his provocative stlye...
but he did go after those people on racial grounds, and had the nerve to deny it in court, he did not justify any matters of public interest except the fact that people should not work for aboriginal organisations if they tend to be on the white side of the colour spectrum...
he could have written the same articles without vilefying people, but choose instead to go after individule prominant aboriginal people,(18 from memory) why, well he is Bolt, and apparently one of the people that reads 18C but not 18D
and now he has aTV programe as well
Cape Verde is a Western country too if you put it that way. So is, arguably, Timor-Leste. And Paraguay.
Rest of post I felt has been ably addressed by Graffito.
Also should be noted that including a clause in 'anti-hate-speech' laws, along the lines of "we still can theorise on such matters in scientific debate, or present it in art" is really in practice just meant to cover the backside's of those people who made the law in the first place, cause they can continue drooling one-sidedly on such issues. They aim just to divide, not to protect anyone. Notice how things spiral always to the worse on that front, notably in places which have such laws for decades (eg USia).
Giving privileges to one group so as to (supposedly) protect it, in reality almost always can just result in added friction between it and other groups, cause it is a law granting privilege to the said group in the first place. No one signed in to supposedly pay for primordial sins, and the level of public debate/media/pol-potliticians seems to always become more like mud mixed with erosive substances of the foulest nature)..
Giving privileges to one group so as to (supposedly) protect it, in reality almost always can just result in added friction between it and other groups, cause it is a law granting privilege to the said group in the first place. No one signed in to supposedly pay for primordial sins, and the level of public debate/media/pol-potliticians seems to always become more like mud mixed with erosive substances of the foulest nature)..
Maybe Cabo Verde is a Western country. I don't know enough to argue either way, but I don't see why it couldn't be. Note though that while Portuguese is the official language there, it is only spoken in everyday life by a minority. In Brazil it's spoken by 100% of the population.
Timor Leste is culturally not that close to Portugal at all. It is an Southeast Asian culture with Western influence. Only 600 people speak Portuguese as a native language there. How does that compare to Brazil (202 million native speakers)?
Paraguay is definitely Western in Asunción and Ciudad de Este, not so much in the Chaco where the vast majority of the people still speak Guarani. Certainly more Western than Cabo Verde or Timor Leste, not so much as Brazil though.
I'm still waiting for why Brazil wouldn't be Western, though.
I can't understand half of what he writes. Maybe Australians are not Western and speak in some undecipherable pidgin dialect? Must be all the Aboriginal and Asian influences. Yep, not Western at all.
gangleri2001
Garbage day!!!
I saw the word Catalonia on the title and thought it would be interesting. People, gay people are money and nothing but money. And money is good.
Gucumatz
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Paraguay and Brazil are western countries. Ideas [legal, political, social, etc.] in both nations derive largely from Europe and population composition is largely descended from the European invaders. Brazil (and Paraguay to a much lesser extent) practice the same forms of political liberalism that the rest of the "west does"
Under your criteria I guess the US isn't really a western nation either?
Domen
Misico dux Vandalorum
Western is a social construct.
What exactly is non-Western about it? Not enough WWASPs is non-Western about it.
It has lost it already (because even large part of "White Non-Hispanic" are non-Western, like for example Polish-Americans, etc.):
What exactly is non-Western about it? Not enough WWASPs is non-Western about it.
It has lost it already (because even large part of "White Non-Hispanic" are non-Western, like for example Polish-Americans, etc.):
Excluding European descendence from the criteria (and according to luiz it shouldn't matter if people are white or brown or black), this makes any democratic country in the world a Western country. I could argue India is a Western country. Why not? Its legal and administrative framework are British-derived. It doesn't have a Christian majority, true, but neither does the Czech Republic.
What about Libreville, or Abidjan; people there speak French as a native language and are Catholic. Are they Western cities in an otherwise non-Western country? But given that they dominate their respective country's political, social, and economic spheres (Libreville much more than Abidjan), they pretty much are Western countries, aren't they?
I - and I am confident more than half of English-speaking peoples - define The West as the United States + Canada + Western and Central Europe + Australia and New Zealand
Commonalities are: stable liberal democratic governments, low level of corruption perception, very high HDI, high GDP per capita, common (more or less) interests in foreign policy wrt the wider world, sharing a common capitalistic culture, majority of population descended from European ancestors. I could also name secularism, a large welfare state, and a more-or-less equitable distribution of wealth, which all Western countries except the United States have in common.
In South America I'd only count Chile and Uruguay as being comparable with Western countries. Not part of the West, since they still see themselves as belonging to the wider South American region (Australians are notoriously insular and often think of Asia being on Mars rather than right next door).
I don't see how excluding European descent would make any democratic country Western. Being Western is about belonging to a culture group, not being democratic, rich or pale skinned. Fascist Italy was a Western country, as was Spain while it was still poor.
If a country speaks a Western language (not a small educated minority, but the whole population), overwhelmingly follow Western religions, and most importantly, operate under Western cultural and philosophical paradigms, that country is Western.
As for European descent, this is the genetic makeup of the Brazilian population (not that it matters, but you seem to be very ill-informed about it):
77.1% European
14.3% African
8.5% Amerindian
This is what the ancestry of the "average" Brazilian is like. Contrast to the average Mexican (55.2% indigenous, 41.8% European, 1.8% African, and 1.2% Other).
Well English-speaking countries sound pretty ignorant of the non-English speaking world, then. If stable liberal governments, very high HDI and high per capita income have anything to do with being Western, then Francoist Spain or Salazarist Portugal wouldn't qualify (but Japan would). Secularism and a large welfare state likewise have nothing to do with it (plenty of examples of 20th Century Western nations where those didn't apply).
As for the majority of the population being descended from Europeans, this is certainly the case in most South American countries (Bolivia, Peru and Paraguay are the big exceptions). But this is neither here nor there, as being Western is about belonging to a culture group, not skin color.
Again, being a Western country is about:
-Speaking a Western language (not by a minority but by the whole population);
-Being culturally Western Christian (Catholic or Protestant);
-Adhering to Western ideas and "way of life".
Domen
Misico dux Vandalorum
So according to Western "One-Drop Rule", you guys are not Western, but very Southern. Equatorial, actually.
taillesskangaru said:
Your definition of "Western" is so narrow that countries can become "Western" and cease to be "Western" many times during a short period of time! BTW - Japan, South Korea, etc. fulfill your requirements for "Western" countries, except for "majority of population descended from European ancestors".
That's just the average genetic makeup, it doesn't mean everybody is mixed. If you did the average genetic makeup of Norway it would be something like 90% European and 10% non-European. This doesn't mean that a random Norwegian has 10% non-European descent.
That said, miscegenation is of course very prevalent in Brazil. But I don't see how having a black great-grandma makes one non-Western? Or even being fully black for that matter.
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