@absasket no idea. I hope so but honestly, anything is possible.
The death toll is now up to 51. Shaun King has posted photos of all the victims on facebook (he’s not through them all yet), with a little detail from their life. So many beautiful people and stories, all cut short.
I don’t know what to do with my feelings. I’m glad that NZ immediately changed their gun laws. I hope it helps them. I’m cheered on by relatively stupid things like “eggboy”. I’m going to send a card to a local mosque. It doesn’t seem like much.
ETA - I feel guilty. I think we exported this.
I’ve taken to referring to eggboy as “the international anti-nazi hero of gen z that no one knew we needed”
So sad for NZ. And weary of the multiple pointless tragedies.
The suspect is from Australia, which seems have plenty of its own prominent white supremacists.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/03/brenton-tarrant-fraser-anning-australia-anti-immigrant-racism.html
https://www.afr.com/news/politics/queensland-senator-fraser-anning-refuses-to-apologise-for-racist-final-solution-speech-20180815-h13zby
Won’t comment on the suggestions that leadership of any particular country is to blame for this, other than the observation there’s nothing new about this, except for the live-streaming. That, and it’s a deviation from the usual pattern of terror attack victims.
Will agree as to the numbness that pervades us all. Numbness to the daily inner-city body counts, numbness to the massacres that occur in the less developed portions of the world (those small scale religious cleansings that barely make the news).
I’ll also admit to a healthy curiosity as to why those last two never seem to merit threads.
I don’t know if anyone else saw Pete Buttigieg’s statement to the Muslim community in his town but it is one of the most beautiful things I have ever read from a politician. It’s reprinted in full in this link:
I don’t want to make this political, but I have been impressed by how the NZ prime minister Jacinda Ardern has handled this–from going to the mosque in a head shawl and hugging people there in a way that seemed genuine and not “photo op”-ish, to announcing a change in the gun laws from doing all possible to speed up identification of the dead so they can be buried quickly as Islam provides.
We have friends from NZ who have been here a year. They find the gun deaths in our city very shocking. This episode in NZ has really bothered them, but the main comment was, “Our govt. usually does such a good job of vetting who they let into the country.”
It is troubling to me that a country like NZ does not have the same free speech rights we have in the US. A teenager who shared the livestream video of the attack has been arrested and denied bail.
It’s one thing for Google to try and remove the video from it’s platform. It’s quite another to make the sharing of a video of a news event a criminal offense.
Somehow I thought countries whose laws were based on English common law would prize freedom of speech.
I’d prefer NZ’s way of handling the video - take it down and make it a major crime to post it. Free speech shouldn’t invade others’ privacy and we don’t need public “speech” of any form that could incite or inspire others to copy it.
I’m not sure why many Americans get hung up on free speech no matter what or who gets hurt. It’s not the most pressing thing out there. We were musing yesterday that H makes a good part of our money due to the lack of freedom the US has in other areas of life. Where we are now (out of country) he’d pretty much need a new job or to focus on other things for his income. Since we’re still deciding what we want to be when we grow up (about another year), these are things we contemplate for us to have a life we enjoy - what do we want to be? Whether we can post nasty videos or not is never a consideration TBH. Nor is any other aspect of “free speech.” I suppose it we thought we might like North Korea or perhaps China that would come into play, but we don’t. The vast majority of places have enough free speech for us - and more freedom for many other things too (less regulation or “saving” people from themselves!).
A Vox podcast reported that people of different faiths lined up outside a mosque in New York, holding up signs of support such as “You are welcome here!”, for worshippers going to Friday prayers. People crying, people hugging.
Gotta tell you, I got tears in my eyes hearing about that kind of outpouring of love & support.
Here is my philosophical and practical opinion, NOT POLITICAL; restricting speech is a dangerous step in a democracy.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/facebook-removed-15-million-videos-of-the-christchurch-attacks-within-24-hours–and-there-were-still-many-more/2019/03/17/fe3124b2-4898-11e9-b871-978e5c757325_story.html says that “Facebook said that it removed 1.5 million videos of footage from the shooting rampage … underscoring the massive game of whack-a-mole”.
I personally don’t think livestreaming videos of identifiable people being shot down in cold blood and dying in agony is “speech.” This is especially true when the people involved are just ordinary citizens. When the posting is accompanied by the caption and comments made by the 18 year old, it most definitely wouldn’t be protected free speech in the US either. (And if you want to know what I mean, read NZ and Aussie reports.)
BTW, in googling for this story, I found the case of an American teenager who was arrested after posting a video of a make believe zombie killing set in his high school with footage of real but unidentifiable people.Only zombies got shot. https://www.foxnews.com/us/indiana-high-school-student-arrested-after-posting-zombie-video-game-clip-to-facebook
True, and Facebook removing content is well within their right. As for the government doing it, of course that depends on certain factors. Free speech, as we all know, isn’t absolute. In general, I’m a strong 1st Amendment advocate, even for speech I find really vile. But the FA doesn’t protect all speech.
Speaking of Facebook, how is FB supposed to be able to prevent people from posting such a video when it’s done live? I agree that once it starts, FB should be able to react to it quickly if they receive reports. But I’m not sure how you keep this kind of thing from happening to begin with.
I think it absolutely would be considered free speech in this country. Just imagine if our government had forbidden people to broadcast the horrific events of 9-11 and had jailed them for spreading the videos online. So in that respect, I don’t admire the way the government of N Z responded.
@TatinG Forgive me if I’m wrong, but I’m not sure you understand what most people mean by livestreaming. Livestreaming is when someone does something and posts a video while doing it. The livestream in this case was created by the alleged killer while he was killing people.
If the pilots of the planes that slammed into the Twin Towers had simultaneously posted a video online while doing it–a “watch us as we kill these people” video–and someone had reposted it with a caption that said “target acquired” and posted comments urging other people to commit similar acts, would you still be upset if the government took it down and punished the second poster? That’s kind of what the NZ 18 year old is charged with doing.
The NZ government has taken the position that rebroadcasting the alleged gunman’s video is a crime. But the 18 year old charged here did more than that. What he actually did wouldn’t be protected by US law either.
I’m not sure that the US would say that reposting the video is illegal. However, I personally would not feel as if my freedom were abridged if US law said that footage broadcast by the alleged perp(s) while (s)he/they are committing a crime isn’t protected speech.
Obviously, you are entitled to a different opinion. I’m just trying to make clear what is involved.