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Merkel sold freedom of press to Turkey


Käpt'n
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We currently have a pretty big debate about satire here in Germany.
It started with a song about Erdogan, the president of Turkey:

(Subtitles are available.)

The song was written in response to Erdogan's government taking control over newspapers in Turkey and broadcasted on TV.
He demanded the song not to be broadcasted anymore and to be deleted from Youtube. Obviously that didn't happen and our government made it clear that we do have freedom of the press, so they don't even have any way to remove the videos.

However, soon after that another program criticized Erdogan... This time it happened in the form of a poem written by Jan Böhmermann. He went further than this song above and attack him directly by calling him a "goat fucker" and a pedophile.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36055488


His goal was twofold:
On the one hand he deliberately wanted to attack Erdogan and his politics because he is a terrible human being.
On the other hand he he wanted to put pressure on chancellor Merkel. He wanted to find out if she will continue to support freedom of the press even in a situation like this or if she will bow down to Erdogan because we need Turkey during the refugee crisis.

Well, she announced today that our government agrees to the prosecution of Jan Böhmermann. Naturally they didn't announce a punishment themselves but now a judge will have to decide whether this counts as an insult or if this falls under freedom of press.

Their reasoning for this? There is an old paragraph, §103 to be exact, that prohibits people from insulting high ranking politicians. It's a relict from the imperial period and no one cares about it anymore. What makes this worse is that right after announcing that they agree to Erdogan's demands of Böhmermann being procecuted because of §103 she said that soon they will begin talks to abolish §103! So if worse comes to worst he has to go to jail for up to 5 years because of an ancient paragraph that they want to abolish anyway. What a load of shit...

Needless to say, people already voice their disapointment in Merkel over this and that she sold our principles to that dictator...

I hate this situation because now Erdogan sucessfully managed to influence our press as well.

Edited by Käpt'n
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26 minutes ago, #00Buck said:

That runs the authenticity.

Can you play wolfenstien in germany or is it banned?

It does! But there is a general ban on swastikas as a nazi symbol in Germany, which is a good thing.
However, if a neo-nazi is wearing a swastika on his clothes and a member of the press takes a photo of him they can show it.

Wolfenstein: The New Order is being sold in Germany, but it is censored:

For example, they turned this:

board.jpg

Into this:

boardc.jpg

And this:

astronaut.jpg

Into this:

astronautc.jpg

At least it's being sold here :P But we are allowed to import uncensored international versions.

18 minutes ago, Saxon said:

I think that song is really funny and actually pretty good musically. x3

I think that the freedom to insult world leaders is part of freedom of speech. 

I am very unhappy about the leverage Turkey is exercising over Europe. 

The melody of the song is based on a popular song from the 80s:

You might know Nena's other popular song, 99 Luftballons :3

And I agree, I am very upset about this situation as well...

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10 minutes ago, #00Buck said:

Wow censorship. 

I'm ok with that as long as it has no impact on the gameplay. They used to heavily censor violent games as well, many games had their ragdoll physics disabled for exmple.

Edited by Käpt'n
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@Käpt'n Oh my god, I love 99 Luftballoons. 

 

I'm ok with that as long as it has no impact on the gameplay. They used to heavily censor violent games as well, many games had their ragdoll physics disabled for exmple.

I think Germany's attitude to censorship is too restrictive. I was speaking to a professor of high-German and she said that one of her former students was interviewed by police because he had this symbol on his back pack: 

antifa.gif

 

Edited by Saxon
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9 minutes ago, Käpt'n said:

I'm ok with that as long as it has no impact on the gameplay. They used to heavily censor violent games as well, many games had their ragdoll physics disabled for exmple.

B-but ragdoll physics are the best part! What kind of fun-hating monsters would do such a thing? Next you'll tell me they cut gibs, too! :Y

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9 minutes ago, DrGravitas said:

B-but ragdoll physics are the best part! What kind of fun-hating monsters would do such a thing? Next you'll tell me they cut gibs, too! :Y

They did. Unreal Tournament 2004 had no gibs and no blood. However! The installer gave you the option to install it in English and if you then apply the latest patch the game was completely uncensored X3

 

13 minutes ago, Saxon said:

@Käpt'n Oh my god, I love 99 Luftballoons. 

 

I think Germany's attitude to censorship is too restrictive. I was speaking to a professor of high-German and she said that one of her former students was interviewed by police because he had this symbol on his back pack: 

antifa.gif

 

I love Nena. Her songs remind me of a time when music was actually good and not just generic trash.

Buttons and accessories with that symbol on it are very common here. Sure, the swastika itself is not allowed, but no one is gonna arrest you for being against nazis X3 That must have been a misunderstanding.

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1 minute ago, Feelwell the Rabbit said:

Hopefully a revolution starts and they'll fight for fairness?

If they start a revolution there's a significant chance it will result in an Islamic caliphate that commits genocide against the Kurds, to be frank. 

Revolutions in middle eastern countries often result in crazy religious nutters taking power, a total loss of stability or martial law....just look at Libya, Egypt and Syria.

Erdogan is almost certainly the lesser evil, holding back the flood-gates, even though he is a massive clunge-knob who seems content to let the Islamic state persist, provided they kill enough Kurds. 

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7 minutes ago, Saxon said:

If they start a revolution there's a significant chance it will result in an Islamic caliphate that commits genocide against the Kurds, to be frank. 

Revolutions in middle eastern countries often result in crazy religious nutters taking power, a total loss of stability or martial law....just look at Libya, Egypt and Syria.

Erdogan is almost certainly the lesser evil, holding back the flood-gates, even though he is a massive clunge-knob who seems content to let the Islamic state persist, provided they kill enough Kurds. 

Yeah, this. Sorry to be blunt but at this point I simply don't think the middle eastern and islamic countries have the potential to create anything resembling a modern western country with free speech and where human rights actually matter. Egypt is the best example for this.

Erdogan is just playing it really smart right now. He knows that the EU needs Turkey to deal with the refugees. So he can pull pretty much anything he wants and other countries will hate him while still giving in to his demands.

By the way, there are people who support that a court should decide about Böhmermann. That the government simply decided that, according to that certain paragraph, there is a reason to settle this in court.
However, the paragraph only says that it can be settled that way. Not that it must me settled in court. The decision whether this should go to court or not was with the government. And they decided to give in to Erdogan.

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12 minutes ago, Saxon said:

If they start a revolution there's a significant chance it will result in an Islamic caliphate that commits genocide against the Kurds, to be frank. 

Revolutions in middle eastern countries often result in crazy religious nutters taking power, a total loss of stability or martial law....just look at Libya, Egypt and Syria.

Erdogan is almost certainly the lesser evil, holding back the flood-gates, even though he is a massive clunge-knob who seems content to let the Islamic state persist, provided they kill enough Kurds. 

I HOPE THE ENTIRE CONTINENT OF EUROPE COLLAPSES INTO THE SEA!

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7 minutes ago, Käpt'n said:

Yeah, this. Sorry to be blunt but at this point I simply don't think the middle eastern and islamic countries have the potential to create anything resembling a modern western country with free speech and where human rights actually matter. Egypt is the best example for this.

Erdogan is just playing it really smart right now. He knows that the EU needs Turkey to deal with the refugees. So he can pull pretty much anything he wants and other countries will hate him while still giving in to his demands.

By the way, there are people who support that a court should decide about Böhmermann. That the government simply decided that, according to that certain paragraph, there is a reason to settle this in court.
However, the paragraph only says that it can be settled that way. Not that it must me settled in court. The decision whether this should go to court or not was with the government. And they decided to give in to Erdogan.

The problem is that the first thing that the masses use their newfound freedom of speech to proclaim is that the freedom of expression of people they don't like should be curtailed. :c

I HOPE THE ENTIRE CONTINENT OF EUROPE COLLAPSES INTO THE SEA!

Lol, Turkey is not Europe. But yes, this is a very frustrating situation. Europe is bound to the east by the Russian quasi-dictatorship and to the south by the middle eastern-north African theocratic powder-keg. 

Edited by Saxon
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6 minutes ago, Saxon said:

The problem is that the first thing that the masses use their newfound freedom of speech to proclaim is that the freedom of expression of people they don't like should be curtailed. :c

Yeah, unfortunately that is something uncivilized buffoons and religious nutjobs like to do. Afterall, we are talking about people who are essentially being kept in the middle ages thanks to their religion.

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3 minutes ago, Gamedog said:

"We need Turkey"

no you dont

nobody needs it

Considering the living conditions in Turkey and other islamic countries it's the other way around, they need us. What do you think why Erdogan wants to get into the EU so badly? 

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4 hours ago, Käpt'n said:

Considering the living conditions in Turkey and other islamic countries it's the other way around, they need us. What do you think why Erdogan wants to get into the EU so badly? 

so he can shake off some of those pesky immigrants swarming his country

why else

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7 hours ago, Feelwell the Rabbit said:

Hopefully the people of Turkey will show outrage and pressure the government to stop being so compliant to these demands.

If DNS server address graffiti in response to social media shutdowns aren't enough to cause the needed outrage to appear...

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10 hours ago, Käpt'n said:

[Irgendwie Irgendwo Irgendwann]

I thought it sounded familiar. I really didn't want that stuck in my head, but there we go.

9 hours ago, Saxon said:

If they start a revolution there's a significant chance it will result in an Islamic caliphate that commits genocide against the Kurds, to be frank.

Not so sure. Persia and Turkey have a decent history of democratic and constitutional movements compared to the rest of the area.

Some of the major parties in Turkey are even pro-Kurd and support a vote on the release of a Kurdish state.

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20 hours ago, Käpt'n said:

By the way, there are people who support that a court should decide about Böhmermann. That the government simply decided that, according to that certain paragraph, there is a reason to settle this in court.

However, the paragraph only says that it can be settled that way. Not that it must me settled in court. The decision whether this should go to court or not was with the government. And they decided to give in to Erdogan.

104a§ StGB does not state under which circumstances the gov is to authorize, only that the diplomatic relationship must be mutual, was at the time of the incident, that there is a request by the insulted and that the gov authorized.

 

On the other hand: Hey we get to make bets whether the gov abolishes the law or the Constitutional court gets to it first. Because IF Böhmermann gets sentenced i'm sure he will take it to the BVerfG.

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