A CALIFORNIA man has been convicted of making racist threats against President Barack Obama during last year's presidential campaign.Walter Bagdasarian faces up to 10 years in federal prison when he is sentenced on October 26 by a judge in San Diego. (not just five as the linked article states) Bagdasarian was found guilty on two counts of making a threat against a major candidate for president during an hour-long bench trial in which no witnesses were presented. Each count carries a maximum sentence of five years.
The court heard that Secret Service agents linked Bagdasarian's home computer to messages posted on a Yahoo! Finance message board.
Bagdasarian expressed the view that an Obama presidency would be extraordinarily damaging "He will have a 50 cal in the head soon," one message read, while another used a racial epithet.
"The defendant admitted that he posted the statement(s) on his home computer," but indicated that he had been drunk at the time. prosecutor William Cole told the judge. "When people make threats, things happen."
Albeit in this case all that did happen was that the guy sobered up and got arrested.
4 comments:
Indeedie, but Americans still enjoy more 'free-speech' than Europeans. Griffin and Collett (and Whittle and Sheppard) would not have been prosecuted in the USA.
There's a lesson in that, whether we turn things around democratically or (more likely) after collapse/revolution: free-speech is one of the most important ideals we will need to resurrect. We must enshrine it in as many laws as possible and promote it in popular myth.
Unfortunately, he is going to have a lot of company very soon. Freedom of speech in America is going to be severely limited very soon, I think, and that is not going to go down very well with an awful lot of people. We can look for many more cases similar to this.
yes when one makes threats things happen like BNP being demonised by the media and government and attacked by the uaf government useless idiot thugs
in the a case of B he is of course right about
an Obma presidency would be extraordinarily damaging
as we can all see unfolding
Let's not kid ourselves here, it's not only blogging where you need to be careful these days, especially when you report that an African leader is corrupt and/or a rapist. Normally I'd shit my pants laughing that a MSM paper has to pay our for libel etc, however we all know that Zoom Zoom Zuma is guilty as charged in both cases, he was just acquitted by a S.A. court.
The implications now after this settlement are quite severe. All you need to do is thing of Mad Dog Mugabe and how the press (which quite rightly) points out what a fricking wanker he is. Anyway for those interested here's the link to the Zuma settlement:
http://www.thetimes.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=1042509
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