Freedom of speech & press

[Guest guest]

With all due respect to Paul Watson's

positive accomplishments, his equation of the

present criminal charges against Rod Coronado

with alleged repression of free speech is

paranoid gibberish.

 

So is his denunciation of the recently

passed Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. In final

form, AETA included this language, introduced

by Diane Feinstein, the Democratic Senator from

San Francisco who has one of the very best

pro-animal and pro-civil liberties records in

U.S. politics:

 

" The term 'economic damage'[the subject

of AETA] Š does not include any lawful economic

disruption (including a lawful boycott) that

results from lawful public, governmental, or

business reaction to the disclosure of

information about an animal enterprise. "

 

Further, under " Rules of Construction " :

 

" Nothing in this section shall be

construed (1) to prohibit any expressive conduct

(including peaceful picketing or other peaceful

demonstration) protected from legal prohibition

by the First Amendment to the Constitution " or

" (2) to create new remedies for interference with

activities protected by the free speech or free

exercise clauses of the First Amendment to the

Constitution, regardless of the point of view

expressed. "

 

In fact, all AETA really does is

consolidate into one piece of legislation the

various penalties that already might have been

brought against people who commit bombings,

arsons, and other violent crimes in the name of

animal advocacy.

 

This is consistent with how penalties

have been consolidated in much recent pro-animal

legislation, e.g. the introduction of felony

penalties for specific types of egregious cruelty.

 

 

With that clarified, let me point out

that I had already been putting my butt on the

line for authentic freedom of speech & press for

several years before Paul Watson cofounded

Greenpeace.

 

In the same year that Watson's public

career began, I began publishing a magazine

called SAMISDAT, which for 242 monthly editions

was instrumental in giving voice to anti-war

Vietnam veterans (I was among the very first to

publish many of the best-known anti-war Namvets),

opponents of U.S. support of Latin American

dictatorships, opponents of nuclear weapons,

advocates of civil liberties in all parts of the

world, proponents of women's rights and gay

rights, and yes, animal rights.

 

Well before was born,

I was involved in helping journalists, poets,

teachers, and others who had run into trouble

for exercise of freedom of speech and press to

find safe refuge in the U.S. and Canada--and was

also involved in bootlegging alternative

publishing know-how and technology into Poland,

China, and miscellaneous police states.

 

(I was in fact the founder of an

organization called Alternative Poland, which in

1982-1983 routed technological information to the

Polish organization Solidarity.)

 

My book The SAMISDAT Method: A

Do-It-Yourself Guide to Printing may be the most

widely distributed how-to manual ever written on

how publish on a budget of nothing. It is not

about the business side of publishing; it is

about building, rebuilding, maintaining, and

using inexpensive printing equipment (offset

presses, mimeograph machines, spirit

duplicators), written for publishers working

under remote and primitive conditions.

 

It is now technologically very obsolete

in the developed world, but I still receive

requests for it from time to time from Africa,

Asia, and eastern Europe, and always send it at

my own expense..

 

None of this activity had a thing in

common with the most recent charges against Rod

Coronado, which result from his having given an

audience rather explicit instructions about how

to manufacture gasoline bombs.

 

I didn't spent half my life promoting the

notion that " Freedom of the press belongs to

those who own a press " to further the activities

of bomb-throwers.

 

Bomb-throwers, and those who incite them, belong in jail.

 

My purpose was to encourage the

expression and distribution of much better and

more effective ideas than just the sorry old

dictum that " Might makes right. "

 

 

--

Merritt Clifton

Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE

P.O. Box 960

Clinton, WA 98236

 

Telephone: 360-579-2505

Fax: 360-579-2575

E-mail: anmlpepl

Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org

 

[ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent

newspaper providing original investigative

coverage of animal protection worldwide, founded

in 1992. Our readership of 30,000-plus includes

the decision-makers at more than 10,000 animal

protection organizations. We have no alignment

or affiliation with any other entity. $24/year;

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