Arundhati and sedition - the legal angle

Read this short but well-researched article on precedents for the use of Section 124 of the Indian Penal Code and its applicability to Arundhati Roy. It is rare to come across such objective analyses in the mainstream media, especially while the dust over a matter has not yet settled. In the middle of the emotional hysteria, who has the time to ask what the law says?

While you are on the story, also check out the reader comments on the same story. Note the number of calls for her head in spite of there not being adequate legal basis for it, and the references to how democratic will should trump laws. I am not about to start statisticizing on the basis of reader comments, of all things, but nonetheless the large-scale disregard for the due process of law is noteworthy.

Thursday morning LOL

Via Hari Jagannath Balasubramanian:



The part I empathize most with Hayek is when he pulls open a drawer in the hotel room and finds the Keynes book. If one stays in a motel/hotel in the US, one can't miss the Bible tactically placed in the bed-side drawer (thanks to Gideons International). Keynesianism and religion both seem to be in a tight race as to which one is the more backward-minded dogma.

God gave you style and gave you grace

I like it when agents of the government are advised of the limits of their power in a nice way. Reminds me of Gandhi.

Post title credit: God Put A Smile Upon Your Face by Coldplay

Ignobel

Every time you find out something that you realize should have been obvious, you grow a bit older.

For instance, in my early years I used to think that India's independence was a highly dramatic affair. I would imagine British ships hastily sailing away on the midnight of 14th August, with their formerly colonized throwing rocks, or worse, at them from the docks. It took me a long time to figure out that while independence was still a watershed event for India, it was a rather drawn-out political process like any other; that the process was aided and sometimes choreographed by the British themselves; that British officials stayed as advisers long after independence day.

Don't laugh, but till Obama got a Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 for doing virtually nothing, I actually thought the prize meant something absolute. Now don't get me wrong; I am not saying the prize is totally a charade, but before Obama I never realized that it was a platform to promote political/social goals as much as anything else. They should call it 'Nobel Attempts at Self-Fulfilling Prophecies'.

This year's Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo heightens my cynicism (and makes me older?). It is a cynical, naughty award.

Listen to Sauvik Chakreverti, one of the commentators I avidly follow, but who sometimes comes across as, oh how do i put it, a nut:

I have been watching this prize for many years now, and seeing it go to complete clowns and dangerous demagogues - Paul Krugman being the best example.

Heh.

Freedom is a double-edged sword - 2

The US Supreme Court is presently hearing a case which promises to leave a long-lasting impression on the interpretation of the First Amendment, and the future of the right to free speech.

The case has been brought by Albert Snyder, father of a US Marine killed in Iraq, against the pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church for invading his privacy by holding an anti-gay, anti-military protest at his son's funeral.

The Westboro Baptist Church is notorious for conducting their acerbic demonstrations at a number of private and public gatherings like funerals, church meetings, and sports events, and Snyder is not the first or last person they have hurt.

Personally, I think having a private funeral disturbed by a political protest would be painful, and my sympathies are with Snyder.












However, the fact that the demonstration caused emotional distress to Snyder is no reason why the court should rule in his favor. Remember that in this case, the facts are not in questions, the interpretation of the law is. Whether the church members' conduct caused pain to Snyder is not in doubt; the question is whether holding them guilty would undermine First Amendment rights.

If the Supreme Court does rule in favor of Snyder, it will set up a precedent whereby any form of non-violent expression which threatens to hurt other people's feelings will be open game for litigation. This has frightful shades of laws such as IPC 295A which makes it a crime to "outrage the religious feelings of (others)", the law the empowered the Indian government to ban Satanic Verses (and has led to a number of frivolous lawsuits such as the the Ravi Shastri one).

As one of the Supreme Court justice remarked today, local laws creating content-neutral zones around funerals are a better response to a situation like this than a personal-injury lawsuit. I agree.

* * * *

While rooting for a decision against Snyder in this case, I wouldn't like to come across as being dogmatic about First Amendment rights. In past cases, the US Supreme Court has reaffirmed that First Amendment rights are not absolute, and I do acknowledge that (read more about exclusions here).

* * * *

The justices seem to be having fun. Below is an excerpt from a discussion from the transcript of today's oral arguments on this case:

Justice Alito: Well, it's an elderly person. She's really probably not in -- in a position to punch this person in the nose.

Justice Scalia: And she's a Quaker, too.

(Laughter.)

Incidentally, the topic of discussion here was exclusions to free speech rights.

"Demographic dividend"...

...seems to be one of the biggest scams in today's economic thought. Possibly a very destructive one.

If I was inclined towards conspiracy theories, I would suggest that advocates/supporters of the notion of demographic dividend (like this and this) are part of a sinister plot against populous societies.

Let them marry

"Man, wives attract police attention" - this headline caught my attention. The story is about the Brown family in Lehi, Utah, which is featured on the reality show Sister Wives on TLC. The family includes four women, a man who all women consider their spouse, and their sixteen children.












The reason the show drew the police's attention to these gentlefolks is because polygamy is illegal in Utah, like everywhere else in the nation. The family belongs to the Mormon Church; the church officially disavowed polygamy in 1904, but fundamentalists still practice it.

After their fierce support of Prop 8, I didn't think I would find myself defending Mormon beliefs (mainstream or otherwise), but here I am:

Just like gay marriage and prostitution, polygamy is an arrangement between consenting adults - I see no reason why the government should get into private lives of citizens.

Of course, I still hold on to my old argument that as much as the government doesn't have a right to bar polygamy or gay unions, it has no right to endorse any kind of marriage. The first thing that society needs to do to right the historical wrongs against homosexuals and polygamists is to eliminate official recognition of all marriages, and re-define familial unions simply as domestic partnerships - of two or more individuals (see previous arguments against state recognition of marriage here, here, and here).