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30-year sentence for transporting zines is a five-alarm fire for free speech

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Re: 30-year sentence for transporting zines is a five-alarm fire for free speech

#31

[flagged]

What? That's pretty bad guarantee. The fact that Trump releases his friends has nothing to do with what should his opposition do. If anything respecting acts of former governments should be the norm.

Re: 30-year sentence for transporting zines is a five-alarm fire for free speech

#32
post #3

Up until now these crazy cases have been rejected by the courts. But this feels like a crack in the dam. A judge actually sentenced someone to 30 years for hiding zines, zines that had been published for years. This was under the pretense hiding those zines was hiding evidence of criminality. And the criminality was worth 75 years. For someone who was at a protest where a federal agent was shot, but was not the shoot…

If you think that this was a protest then yeah it's worrying.

The feds case, which they did win convictions based on, was that they were terrorists who set off fireworks to lure police into an ambush, and there weren't more casualties because one of the members shot early and only injured one cop. An accessory to this who hid evidence is also part of the crime in the Feds case

Is this embellished by the Feds? I think so, it seems some of the group did not think this was the plan. But there did seem to be a plan and it did involve bringing guns, setting off fireworks, opening the gate and trying to break out the prisoners, and "not going quietly"

Re: 30-year sentence for transporting zines is a five-alarm fire for free speech

#33
post #15

[flagged]

My understanding is that aiding and abetting has to be causal and happen before the alleged crime. That doesn't seem to line up with the timeline of this case (barring the existence of secret Antifa time machines)

Re: 30-year sentence for transporting zines is a five-alarm fire for free speech

#34
post #3

Up until now these crazy cases have been rejected by the courts. But this feels like a crack in the dam. A judge actually sentenced someone to 30 years for hiding zines, zines that had been published for years. This was under the pretense hiding those zines was hiding evidence of criminality. And the criminality was worth 75 years. For someone who was at a protest where a federal agent was shot, but was not the shoot…

I think all of this hinges on whether or not you think it was a protest. If they had been peacefully sitting outside the facility holding signs, I think you'd have a case that the sentencing is insane. But if they were actively planning a break-in & preparing to use deadly force, that's quite another matter. I haven't spent a lot of timing reading about it, but what I have read suggests it was much closer to the latt…

Unfortunately, the administration wants it both ways- if you were on the Capitol grounds on January 6, 2021, you were simply part of a "peaceful tour group". If you stand to the side of an ICE agent in Minneapolis, you are a "domestic terrorist", deserve to be murdered in cold blood, and any attempts to investigate further will be stonewalled.

So it's hard to take their characterization seriously when they have demonstrated that there is a clear double standard, depending on whether you are a FoT (Friend of Trump).

Re: 30-year sentence for transporting zines is a five-alarm fire for free speech

#35
post #31

[flagged]

What? That's pretty bad guarantee. The fact that Trump releases his friends has nothing to do with what should his opposition do. If anything respecting acts of former governments should be the norm.

[flagged]

Re: 30-year sentence for transporting zines is a five-alarm fire for free speech

#37
post #30

[flagged]

wow, I feel like the overton window hasn't just shifted, it's off the page. Back in the 90s we would openly share the Anarchist's Cookbook, CIA field manual for sabotage, etc. then lace our emails intentionally with "trigger words" when it was theorized that the NSA was reading all Internet traffic, so as to emphasize our free speech absolutism. Now, an article comes out about sentences handed down for ... free speec…

These free speech warriors didn’t actually care about free speech. They just wanted to be able to say horrible things without consequences.

Re: 30-year sentence for transporting zines is a five-alarm fire for free speech

#40
post #30

[flagged]

wow, I feel like the overton window hasn't just shifted, it's off the page. Back in the 90s we would openly share the Anarchist's Cookbook, CIA field manual for sabotage, etc. then lace our emails intentionally with "trigger words" when it was theorized that the NSA was reading all Internet traffic, so as to emphasize our free speech absolutism. Now, an article comes out about sentences handed down for ... free speec…

You're talking about a different group of people. Back then, the only people who were online were relatively technical, which for whatever reason correlates with leaning libertarian (left or right). My theory is that the experience of identifying a solution to a problem, then being told it can't be implemented because someone with authority says "no" shakes one's belief in authority fundamentally.

Regardless, nowadays online, even in tech circles like this one, you have a much broader sample of the general population. In the case of HN, it's split more evenly than you'd expect from the general population between software developers, and tech entrepreneur types (or at least wannabes). The latter group is perfectly happy with oppressive power structures as long as they help them make money, and aspire to be the authority that says "no".

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