Posted by Fiotheth on Fri, 05 Jun 2009 04:15 | #

Yes the Heretical 2 case is an OUTRAGE in my mind.

This is so clearly a violation of the ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ that the liberals all supposedly hold so dear!  What hypocrisy!

‘Article 19
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.’

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights#Human_rights_set_out_in_the_Declaration

The thing is alot of their site barely deals with Racial issues and there is alot more about Male/ Female relations then probably anything else. 

I have sort of been hoping that if the BNP makes some serious electoral gains that perhaps they could point to this situation and help the Heretical 2 out.

Anyhow as an American Citizen it is clear that actual Freedom of Speech is not valued here, just look at the treatments of Hendrik Mobus, Ernst Zundel, and the Heretical 2 and then compare that to how all the mestizo trash are just allowed to come and go!!!

This is a sick, twisted, hypoctritical society that claims to value Freedom of Speech and the 1st amendment, but just can’t wait to jump on anyone that actually utilizes those rights and if possible deport them because they do not have the politically correct opinions!!  May the USA government Collapse like the Soviet Union did!  “Ride the Tiger!”—Baron Julius Evola.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Fri, 05 Jun 2009 04:42 | #

The main problem here is that Jews don’t believe in freedom of speech.  They can’t fathom the concept; it’s not in their Asiatic genes, any more than it’s in a Chinaman’s or an Arab’s genes.  And Jews exert lots and lots and lots of pressure here.

Posted by J Richards on Sat, 06 Jun 2009 07:02 | #

Guessedworker,

Anyone who has read my responses to JR’s narrow and narrowing propagandism will know that, for me, the nationalist’s motives have to be morally irreproachable.  We are above ethnic hatred.  We do not, and Simon and Stephen did not, need to indulge in anything that could be exploited by agents of a hostile law.  We need to free our people from their chains, not place around them chains of our own, and not place ourselves in chains of a different kind.

It’s not possible to have morally irreproachable stances when the arbiter of the yardstick to judge moral propriety is the enemy.  Comply with the enemy’s requirements and you have an ineffective, useless argument.

Simply stating verifiable facts should not be seen as promoting hatred, but it will be when the enemy decides what constitutes hatred. 

Consider Holocaust denial laws in Germany.  German law doesn’t care about whether the Holocaust happened.  All it cares about is whether you have denied it.  How can people be freed of chains in a scenario like this?  By complying with the law?

Simon Sheppard and Stephen Whittle were prosecuted for two publications, a newsletter that was apparently print only (I can’t find copies online) and a satirical publication called ‘Tales of the Holohoax’; the prosecution called it Tales of the Holocaust.  Tales of the Holohoax is a cartoon book of absurd Holocaust claims.  It cites references such as Arthur Butz, Ditlieb Felderer, Michael Hoffman, various news reports, etc.  But what makes it markedly offensive to Jews is how the cartoons of the great artist A. Wyatt Mann (A white man) satirize absurd Jewish claims.  Heretical still features a mostly complete scan of Tales of the Holohoax (missing endnotes).

Simon Sheppard and Stephen Whittle were prosecuted, in part, for a publication that they had no part in preparing.

You may argue that the appropriate manner of exposing ludicrous Holohoax claims is to post scholarly claims, but how many people are going to read pages after pages of dull scholarly text?  Tales of the Holohoax makes numerous Holohoax claims accessible to a wide audience in a very engaging manner, and the references are listed in the endnotes for those looking for scholarly documentation.
   
In light of the prosecution of Simon Sheppard and Stephen Whittle, what should we do?  MR’s in a similar situation as heretical.com: English owners hosting their websites offshore.  So I can’t post Tales of the Holohoax at MR, but I can link to it.  I’m going to come up with The Annotated Tales of the Holohoax, with extensive text-based commentary to help visually-impaired individuals get the gist of it (because an OCR program will have a difficult time with the text in the scans), and then link to it from MR.  This way we work around the laws the enemy creates to undermine us and do our part to spread the message in a manner that both children and adults will enjoy.

Something most definitely needs to be done.  I don’t advocate doing anything rash, but if the necessary act is morally sound but not legally sound, then the legal boundaries need to be pushed, the laws need to be worked around or, simply, defied.  Or else, far from removing the chains from our people, we’ll see them enmeshed in thicker, heavier chains, and our task will become increasingly harder.

Posted by Dan Dare on Mon, 22 Jun 2009 03:30 | #

An apology is probably in order for resuscitating this earlier, short-lived discussion, however an update is now appropriate and, in addition, I wanted to make a few observations about some of the wider implications of the ‘Heretical Two’ case (hereafter H2), especially in light of the quite recent High Court ruling concerning the removal of anonymity for bloggers where that can be shown to be in the ‘public interest’.

First, the state of play with respect to the H2. They were returned to the UK last week and have already appeared before a judge who has remanded them in custody pending sentencing on July 10th. No doubt lengthy sentences await, up to seven years on the existing convictions of ‘stirring up racial hatred’ and most likely a generous supplementary on top for cocking a snook at the system by jumping bail and fleeing to America. Sheppard has previous ‘form’, so is likely to be dealt with particularly harshly pour encourager les autres.

As far as Sheppard and Whittle are concerned, we can consider the case closed and all that remains is to keep our fingers crossed that they receive appropriate protection from vengeful vibrant enrichers whilst inside. But what does it all portend for the rest of us, especially those brave souls like our esteemed host who both provides and administers this exceptional vehicle for our joint cogitations?

In brief, I would have to conclude that the outlook is rather gloomy for anyone resident in the UK who operates any sort of media outlet where serious dissent is expressed about the long term objectives of the multicultural state. The H2 case, like that of the BNP Two (Nick Griffin and Mark Collett) in 2006, signals a heightened resolve on the part of the establishment to stifle political dissent. Although Griffin and Collett were eventually acquitted, this was in large part due to the skill with which the defence were able to deflect the charges of incitement to racial hatred by successfully claiming that their ‘hate speech’ was directed towards militant Islamic fundamentalists and their followers rather than ‘Asians’ or ethnic minorities in general. A cop-out for sure, but an effective one, albeit a gambit which would probably not succeed today since the recent extension of the Public Order Act 1986 to cover religious as well as racial ‘hatred’.

But to return to the H2, it is not the case, as Guessedworker suggests in the opening post, that the offending material which led to their convictions is no longer displayed on the displayed on the Heretical.com website. Remarkably, the website is still in operation and continues to display all the content that it did at the time of their arrest. There is even some additional content on the front page dealing with their asylum claim in the US and, interestingly for the first time, a full list of the materials for which they were summonsed and convicted. These are cited here, which links to actual pieces concerned:

- One count of possession and one count of publishing the Tales of the Holohoax comic book.

- One count of possession and one count of distributing the Don’t Be Sheeple newspaper [no online link].

- Two counts of re-publishing, on the internet, the Robert Crumb cartoons When the Niggers Take Over America and When the Goddamn Jews Take Over America

- Two counts relating to the re-publishing, on the internet, of propaganda items created by American Nazi Party in the 1960s Rockwell Boat Ticket 2 and The Swastika

- Three counts of re-publishing, on the internet, the Ohrdruff, a Satirical View of the Alleged Holo©o$t® website. The specific pages cited were: Auschwitz Holiday Resort, Evil Zionist Kike Vermin and Kike Windchimes

- Five counts of publishing, on the internet, original articles by Stephen Whittle (aka Luke O’Farrell): Dumb Niggers, Gloating Sheenies, Hells Bells, Make Niggers History, Diversity = Death, and Three Parasites and a Funeral.

Sheppard was convicted on all sixteen counts, while Whittle was also convicted on the last five counts.

One thing that will be immediately apparent is that only the five articles by Whittle, and the ‘Don’t be Sheeple’ newsletter can be said to be ‘homegrown’; all the remainder are existing publications from third-parties, freely available then and still now elsewhere in the public domain. The Crumb cartoons, for example, were openly published in the UK in the mid-90s and can be viewed even today behind the paywall of New Yorker magazine. I’m of the same opinion as GW that given the present repressive political climate the public dissemination of such material is probably counter-productive and does not confer anything useful from a political perspective, but that doesn’t seem to have been H2’s objective anyway.

What is actually also quite striking about the material in question (ie that selected for prosecution) is that, rather being specifically racist as the term is usually understood, it is overwhelmingly anti-Semitic in tone and focuses strongly on debunking the Holocaust or, more correctly, what the defendants termed the Cult of Holocaustianity. Little surprise then to learn that the initial complaint to the police came not, as might have been thought in a case alleging incitement to racial hatred, from an Equalities and Diversity watchdog quango such as the CRE, but rather from the Board of Deputies of British Jews. But wait! I hear you say; don’t the Jews maintain that that they are not a separate race, but rather merely a religion, in effect the parent company of contemporary Judeo-Christianity? Well yes, normally they do, but the BDBJ made a sotto voce special application for Jews to be made into a race for the purposes of protection under the Race Relations legislation and the government of the day unsurprisingly acceded to the request. Thus, by the simple ruse of tacking on a few extraneous bells and whistles (cf When the Niggers…) what is in effect a prosecution for anti-Semitic thought and Holocaust denial has been camouflaged as a case of incitement to racial hatred, serving further to preserve the fiction that Holocaust denial is not a criminal offence in Britain.

At this point it may be worthwhile examining a little more closely the statutory instrument under which the H2 prosecution was brought, that is, the Public Order Act of 1986. This Act superseded the POA of 1936 with the express intention of adding some ‘teeth’ to the existing body of race relations legislation through the criminalisation of ‘racial hatred’. Part III of the Act applies, the H2 being prosecuted under Sections 19 (publishing) and 23 (possession). Section 19, in truncated form reads as follows (the compete Act can be obtained from here:

19 Publishing or distributing written material

(1)  A person who publishes or distributes written material which is threatening, abusive or insulting is guilty of an offence if (a)he intends thereby to stir up racial hatred, or (b) having regard to all the circumstances racial hatred is likely to be stirred up thereby.

The key points to note are that there need be no incitement to violence for an offence to have occurred under S.19, and that there is no requirement to show intent, merely that racial hatred is likely to be ‘stirred up’. Interestingly also, no definition is provided as to what actually constitutes racial hatred, the term being defined in S.17 not by what it is but by whom is to be protected against it.

17 Meaning of “racial hatred”

In this Part “racial hatred” means hatred against a group of persons defined by reference to colour, race, nationality (including citizenship) or ethnic or national origins.

Whether it was the intention of the framers of this legislation or not (since it occurred in the Thatcher era I suspect not), the consequence of language this slack is that the authorities have a handy multi-role legislative tool which can be put to a variety of different applications. All that is required is that a member of a protected group to lodge a complaint alleging some speech or writing to be threatening, abusive or insulting and that a judge and/or jury can be persuaded that racial hatred (whatever that is) is likely to be stirred up (whatever that means) thereby. It’s difficult to overestimate the chilling effect that Orwellian regulations of this scope have upon free and open discourse in a democratic society.

A final comment before leaving S.19: the H2 were nobbled because they were easily identified as the ‘publishers’ of the offending materials, even though they did not create most of it. The novelty of this case is that, for the first time, British subjects were held liable for activities took place outside the normal jurisdiction of English courts, that is in cyberspace (the physical systems were in California). Clearly the materials in question were presented (and still are presented) on the website that they controlled, but what sort of a legal precedent does this create for future prosecutions? What about, for example, a website such as this one which may not host materials that might be held to be ‘threatening, abusive or insulting’ but merely links to sites that do? Given the cavalier fashion and the ease in which a High Court judge was able to extend jurisdiction across the Atlantic is it beyond the bounds of possibility that an activist judge assigned to a future ‘racial hatred’ case could rule that linking alone constitutes publication or distribution for the purposes of S.19 of the POA 86?

Besides the convictions for publishing and distributing ‘racially inflammatory’ material, H2 were also had up on charges of ‘possession’ under S.23. Now this is a particularly worrisome point since, although possession itself is not technically an offence (it must be possession ‘with a view to distribution’), having offending material on one’s laptop and emailing it to a single other person would probably constitute an offence under the Act. And any such offence carries with it a potential jail term of seven years. That should be warning enough for any visitors from the USA and elsewhere who have any involvement whatsoever with any of the thousands of ‘hate’ sites as defined by the ADL and SPLC. Or even anyone else who even suspects that the authorities would like to see them stitched up for whatever reason – if you visit the UK, leave your laptop at home.

Section 23 then in all its glory:

23 Possession of racially inflammatory material

(1)  A person who has in his possession written material which is threatening, abusive or insulting, with a view to, in the case of written material, its being displayed, published, distributed, whether by himself or another, … is guilty of an offence if he intends racial hatred to be stirred up thereby or, having regard to all the circumstances, racial hatred is likely to be stirred up thereby.

Having started with an apology, best then to end with another, to anyone to whom this epistle seems overlong or rambling. Sorry about that.

Posted by 1z0-052 on Mon, 22 Jun 2009 10:30 | #

I was initially concerned about this story due to ramifications concerning web site hostings in other countries, After hearing just how vile the defendants were My only concern is that Shepperd hasn’t actually killed himself yet…..I would have payed money to have seen old glue bag whatmough Blubbing into his Leiderhosen.1z0-055

Posted by Dan Dare on Fri, 10 Jul 2009 19:08 | #

In what is probably the final chapter in the H2 case, Sheppard and Whittle were sentenced at Leeds Crown Court today. Sheppard received 4 1/2 years and Whittle two, with each receiving an additional four months for skipping bail. To the best of my knowledge, Sheppard’s sentence is the longest yet imposed for ‘racial hatred’ offences.

Whether or not we agree agree with Sheppard and Whittle’s tactics and approach, website proprietors and contributors in the UK may find the following comments made in the BBC report particularly disturbing:

... The pair thought that they could circumvent English law because their website was hosted in the US.

That, said Adil Khan, head of diversity and community cohesion at Humberside Police, makes their conviction a first.

“This case is groundbreaking,” he said.

“The fact is now that we’ve been able to demonstrate that you’ve got nowhere to hide; people have been hiding on [sic] the fact that this server was in the US.

“Inciting racial hatred is a crime and one which seems to occur too regularly. This kind of material will not be tolerated as this lengthy investigation shows.”

Posted by Captainchaos on Fri, 10 Jul 2009 21:56 | #

website proprietors and contributors in the UK may find the following comments made in the BBC report particularly disturbing

Jonathan Bowden says British hate speech laws are specifically designed to target the way in which working-class Whites are comfortable voicing their objections to divershitty.  That is why he keeps an academic tone, he avers.

head of diversity and community cohesion at Humberside Police

Wtf?!