Day: April 1, 2002

Can You Shout Fire in a Crowded Theater?

Inevitably it takes just a few minutes of debating free speech when some interloper will interject that there have to be limits on speech because, “You can’t, after all, yell ‘Fire’ in a crowded theater.” The Associated Press has a report about two people caught up by that sort of thinking and arrested simply because their speech was considered to incendiary to be tolerated.

To be sure, the men involved in these cases said things that the average person is likely to find reprehensible. Reggie Upshaw was charged with disorderly conduct and inciting a riot when he went to Times Square a few days after the Sept. 11 attack saying, among other things,

It’s good that the World Trade Center was bombed. More cops and firemen should have died. More bombs should have been dropped and more people should have been killed.

Police reported that a crowd had gathered around Upshaw and some in that crowd made threats against his life.

William Harvey, meanwhile, was arrested on October 4 near the ruins of the World Trade Center dressed in military fatigues and holding a sign featuring Osama bin Laden. Harvey told a crowd of about 60 who gathered that the terrorist attacks were revenge on the United States for the way it treats Muslim countries.

Now in both cases, police are certainly correct that allowing the speech to continue could have caused a riot or other public disturbance, and were wise given the circumstances to take these gentlemen into custody if only for their own protection.

But should they then be charged and prosecuted for trying to incite a riot? Judges separately in each case have ruled that their words are not subject to the First Amendment protection since they knew or should have known that their speech would be likely to incite a riot.

First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams, on the other hand, told the AP that the two men’s statements were,

. . . political advocacy, detestable to almost all of us, but protected nonetheless. . . . I find disturbing the notion that people can be jailed for reasons that bear on the content of what they are saying.

I concur. Prosecuting these two nitwits seems unlikely to serve much purpose.

Source:

Judges Rule Against 2 Accused of Praising Sept. 11 Attacks. Associated Press, March 30, 2002.

Bush Is Held Hostage by His Obsession with Iraq

The New York Times nicely illustrates why I think the current administration’s obsession with Saddam Hussein and Iraq is counter-productive. Reporter James Bennet writes,

Mr. Bush’s quandary is this: To retain a consistent and coherent stance against terrorism, he has little choice but to excoriate Mr. Arafat for failing to stop the suicide bombings. So on Saturday Mr. Bush demanded that Mr. Arafat call for a halt in the suicide bombings in Arabic and use his besieged security forces to crack down on the terrorists and their weaponry. So far, Mr. Arafat has ignored those calls.

Under the logic of the Bush doctrine, that would compel Mr. Bush to treat the Palestinian leader the way he has treated Al Qaeda and the Taliban, a point the Israelis are making daily. But in this case, as some of Mr. Bush’s advisers acknowledge, that logic has run headlong into other priorities.

To build Arab support for his impending confrontation with Iraq, Mr. Bush knows he cannot afford to alienate other Arab nations, whose anti-Israel declarations have grown in vehemence and urgency, along with their demands that Mr. Bush restrain the Sharon government.

Bush’s seeming inflexible view that there must be some sort of attack on Iraq is allowing Arab countries to hold U.S. foreign policy hostage. Don’t push too far on Israel, they saw, or forget about counting on us when it comes time to take out Saddam Hussein.

There is an odd parallel in the way Bush was recently held hostage by one of his dumber acts of deal making with Congress, when he refused to lift steep tariffs on Pakistani textiles to please corporate fat cats and voters in areas likely to be impacted by any cessation or lowering of such tariffs.

I’ve always wondered what the fascination is to hold such awesome power and then let people nickel and dime it away from you. Letting Arafat know the United States will not tolerate terrorism in that region any longer should be a much higher foreign policy goal than removing Hussein — especially when Arab countries are going to have a lukewarm reaction at any attack on Iraq regardless of what the United States does visa vis Israel.

Coolest Bike Accessory Ever

I don’t own a bike at the moment, but I’m going to have to go out and buy one now just to put Hokey Spokes on it.

I saw a similar technology toy that did the same thing with a frisbee — you could program a message and when it was thrown the message would be visible on LEDs installed on the outer edge of the frisbee.

But this is way cooler than that.

Are We All Alone in the Universe?

The Independent (UK) published excerpts from a lecture given by professor of environmental sciences Andrew Watson about the possibility of ever encountering alien life forms. Watson argues that for all intents and purposes, human beings are probably alone in the universe.

Watson notes that the best evidence is that life began about 3 billion years ago on this planet, and it took 2 billion years after that for complex life to arise. Life on Earth has only about 1 billion years left before changes in the sun and environment lead to a runaway greenhouse effect that will render life impossible. So, assuming other planets where life develops are similar to Earth, sentient life has a very narrow (by the universe’s standards, at least) window in which to evolve.

According to Watson,

Out beyond our own special planet, complex life is rare, and sentient life (aliens) rare still. That a large number of planets probably exist does not make it reasonable to assume that sentient life is inevitable on at least some planets if the chances of it arising are infinitesimally low. Our evolution at a late stage of our planet’s history is consistent with beings like us being so rare that we are very unlikely to contact any other. Whether we like it or not, therefore, we are probably, in effect, alone in the universe, and this planet the only place we will ever know where the universe has come into self-awareness.

Well, hopefully we will expand onto other planets, but don’t expect any visitors to come knocking anytime soon.

Source:

Forget about aliens: we’re all alone in the universe. Andrew Watson, The Independent (UK), March 28, 2002.