Fabrice Muamba: Page 7 - The Arsenal discussion community: One More in the Tolly

Fabrice Muamba

Coombs

Tony Montana wrote:
How did you get that gig?

I've lived in NY for a year but I'm moving back now. Wouldn't mind living in the U.S. but then there's family, friends and live European football at normal times (i.e not when you're at work or sleeping in on Saturday morning/afternoon).

Never been to Colorado.

It's an alright place (Colorado), better than I expected. They are really into football (soccer) out here. I work in [experimental] media arts and there is a lot of history and interest for it. Most of the family is no longer in England anymore, split up between the US and Canada. There is good work being done in the UK on the motion picture arts front, but some of the Brits I've worked with keep telling me not to come back as the climate is apparently rife with frustrations for my sort of work.

Pepe LeFrits

Bastards. Wish I lived in the US.

y va marquer

The media going mental on the Stacey sentence is beside the point as far as I'm concerned.

He got precisely what he deserved for publishing racist and deliberately vile comments on a public space.

Maybe now some similarly pathetic cowardly idiots might think twice before drink and anonymity propels them into writing things designed to be hateful and destructive.

mohan

so where do you draw the line? Who is going to say this is where you crossed the line and you will be jailed for it?
So thin line and do you think the govt/law or the officials (whatever) are not going to misuse?

I am still confused about this!

Tony Montana

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/17565539

Lol Muamba smiling!

🙂

y va marquer

Would he have stood up and voiced publically those views, in a room full of people?
I think not.
If he had done so could he have been arrested?
Possibly, yes.

There's the line.
Anonymity and a keypad do not make you invisible or above the law.

Ricky1985

Tony Montana wrote:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/17565539

Lol Muamba smiling!

🙂

Warms my heart to see that. Never thought there was a chance when I watched him carried off at Shite Hart Lane.

Meatwad

i prefer my racism out in the open and not hidden in backrooms (or worse boardrooms). at least i know where i stand with the guy with a swastika tattooed on his forehead.

he shouldn't be jailed, you're just driving him further into the grasp of the bnp. the shit he would have gotten from his peers at school (if they aren't just like him) would have been punishment enough. now he's jailed, will probably drop out of school. how does society benefit from that?

kamikaze

i don't understand the law. thinking racist things is still legal. but can one say racist things out loud to a small group of people? what if one posts racist things on his friends-only fb wall?

is a line drawn because the racist speech offends others? then can you be imprisoned for calling someone fat or dumb or a whore in an excessively rude way? i've abused chamakh on here, am i in danger of being imprisoned if i set foot in the UK again?

or is the line drawn because you might foment violence through your racist speech? if that is the case, then why even make a distinction as to whether the speech is racist? fomenting or inciting violence is what it is already.

everyone agrees that what this kid said was despicable, but to me, in a country that values freedom, i don't see how that justifies imprisonment. it's a big deal to curtail someone's freedom of movement, even if it's "just" for 40 days or whatever it is. to me, that's a punishment for crimes that actually hurt people, and not a "crime" that merely offends the sensibilities of society or of a certain judge.

y va marquer

He was sentenced to 40 days because he broke the law, even on appeal this proved to be the case.
Comments made on-line are not beyond the law.
Not sure why people are having such a difficult time understanding that.
The law was not invented to punish him specifically, he was not imprisoned because the morally outraged demanded that he should be, or because the media worked itself up into a frenzy over the whole story, the law he contravened existed long before he made his comments.

Here's what the judge said:

"He was intending to say what he said and was intending to produce the effect that he did,"

"There can be no avoiding the conclusion that your offence was committed in the context of a grave illness that had afflicted Fabrice Muamba.

"It was immediately apparent that he was gravely ill and while he was lying prostrate on the pitch you posted comments that were extremely racist couched in terms that can only be described as extremely offensive.

yuv

Kami, that's a very nice post (and I enjoyed reading your take as well, coombs).

These are not easy issues, and they are not necessarily proved right either way. It is not even sure there's sense in dissecting (separate "violence" form "racial". Or, for that matter, the idiot from the racist).

There certainly could be harm in such speech, and tweeting is as public as it gets - it is something you do (therefor we're not discussing mere "thought police"). However, the dangers of public opinion effect, government over reaction and pressure (even if the judicial system is "independent of it") are very real. Those of you who find comfort in the "fact" that the law is no fluke, and that it "existed before this case", stood appeal, etc., should ask yourselves if you are not conflating the satisfaction of seeing a sleaze being punished with things actually going the right way. Right means for all sides of it.
And here, several issues unrelated to justice - or indeed clearly threatening justice - seemed to have raised their heads.

I'd not rush to belittle what that idiot has done (if indeed I got the right picture regarding what he has done). He deserves punishment. But I agree with those who say we should be worried about many aspects concerning the way the man was dealt with. That he's a sleaze we all agree. That's not where work ends - it's where it begins. otherwise, we put ourselves at risk of becoming that ourselves (yes, I'm aware of the difference. It's the similarities I'm concerned with, slight as they may be: we are not he).

Coombs

I feel as if I haven't condemned the dipshit at all, really, and I'd like to take the opportunity to do so. Stacey is a total dipshit and ingrate. Even worse, he is absolutely and completely stupid in the most offensive of ways.

I agree that he published "racist and deliberately vile comments" on twitter and that he intended "to produce the effect that he did," but the little cricket in my brain tells me these are irrelevant facts in-so-far as judgement/punishment by an elected government. Don't think it should ever be within a government's power (I maintain that the courts are very much a part of government even if said government practices judiciary independence; they still operate based on the laws of a nation which are created and executed by the other governmental branches) to exercise this kind of authority over public or private speech, regardless of the situation. The fact that the judge finds it necessary to mention the specific circumstances, for me, is too subjective a view for what is supposed to be an impartial judge. It shouldn't matter whether Muamba was dead, ill, or perfectly healthy. The law, for me, has to be objective and clear and ruled less by subjective qualitative values and more by objective quantitative ones. Any racism Stacey may have incited was already latent in the audience he was reaching. Blaming him for this and jailing him for it is papering over the cracks of deeper sociological concerns that won't be rectified by fear and punishment, but by more positive, constructive means.

Above all, it will take time. We're on the right track in general, I feel, but incidents like this (which is all over the news here, with political pundits politicking their red-faced heads off) are totally counter-productive. The little twat should have simply been ignored by the police, the courts, and the media, imo. Let his family, friends, and peers deal with him.

Very well spoken, kami. Pretty much exactly how I feel about it (plus a healthy dose of indignation). And yuv's point is also a very interesting one re: We vs. He. I find that the "He" all too often dies for the sins of the "We." Kind of like blaming Ramsey for our terrible season (though he's been pretty crap!). In short: scapegoating.

EDIT: Not that I'm really comparing Stacey to Jesus!

yuv

You leave Ramsey out of this ! 🙂

Pepe LeFrits

Captain wrote:
Pepe LeFrits wrote:
For me 6 of the 11 first google results for Muamba return links about the racism story.

Can't say I'm too enthused with the laws on this. Partly because of the precedent, but also because throwing people in jail isnt a terribly effective way of killing an idea.

Precedent was set some time ago Peps, this one just happens to be in the news because it involved Muamba.

I wasn't referring to this case Capi but the law itself. I find it mildly concerning that free speech in the UK (and Ireland too I believe) is basically malleable and open to being defined by the beliefs of whomever is in power at any given time.

y va marquer

The irony of all of this is that few of us know exactly what it is that he said.
For my part I believe that it must have been serious, pernicious, harmful and malicious, given that he was sentenced.

I have no doubt that those who govern want to control what is communicated on the internet, it's a battle that we will see fought over the years to come.

But I would not waste my time using Stacey as an example of why we should rail against the authoroties desire to impose control over our thought and speech.
I'm actually unperturbed by the fact that he was packed off to prison for forty days.

yuv

Nobody's worried about him personally, and no one wants to storm the bastille for his sake. I can only speak for myself, but I would imagine others worried about this couldn't give a fuck if he rots in hell either.

The thing is that an attitude like the one expressed in this last post (which I think is not unique at that in this thread - it looks like the main thrust is thinking alike), while perhaps spot on in the specific judgment - a bad guy got a harsh treatment, yey - it is neglecting a deeper principle for the particular case.

Now whether justice (and such) should work more as particular than as principled is a heavy subject, and I don't think this is the right place. Surely we could present positive aspects of both, and specific circumstances in which one would be better. But the risk of "going particular, in principle" is just too much.

Though I don't think it is entirely true that the judicial arm is a part of the government, as suggested earlier, it is still affected by much external influence (or is at least in real danger of being affected thus): majority opinion (not always a good thing), people of power (government, media, rich, what have you), even legal "fashion". And certainly legal zeal (again - I'm not always sure if that's a good thing). Pepe expressed a like concern in:

concerning that free speech... is basically malleable and open to being defined by the beliefs of whomever is in power at any given time

In this case freedom of speech, but case could be generalized further when a principle seems to be sacrificed for the good of a specific case. And particularly if we want to have faith in the justice system, such as expressed by this:

I believe that it must have been serious, pernicious, harmful and malicious, given that he was sentenced.

If we want to continue to be able to have such faith, we must make sure our eyes are kept open, and we don't encourage any impartiality.

y va marquer

We are all pontificating without full knowledge of what it is that Stacey said.
That particular fact is key and is being largely ignored in most of the posts that I have read.
I do not have a huge amount of faith in either those who run our countries or in the legal sytem that upholds our laws.
The laws themselves are often questionable.

I do however believe that generally speaking judges avoid handing out custodial sentences, the usual complaint is that sentences handed down are not severe enough.

For that reason alone I thought that whatever it is that Stacey said must have been malevolent to the extent that it warranted a severe punishment.

Biggus

yuv wrote:
Kami, that's a very nice post (and I enjoyed reading your take as well, coombs).

These are not easy issues, and they are not necessarily proved right either way. It is not even sure there's sense in dissecting (separate "violence" form "racial". Or, for that matter, the idiot from the racist).

There certainly could be harm in such speech, and tweeting is as public as it gets - it is something you do (therefor we're not discussing mere "thought police"). However, the dangers of public opinion effect, government over reaction and pressure (even if the judicial system is "independent of it") are very real. Those of you who find comfort in the "fact" that the law is no fluke, and that it "existed before this case", stood appeal, etc., should ask yourselves if you are not conflating the satisfaction of seeing a sleaze being punished with things actually going the right way. Right means for all sides of it.
And here, several issues unrelated to justice - or indeed clearly threatening justice - seemed to have raised their heads.

I'd not rush to belittle what that idiot has done (if indeed I got the right picture regarding what he has done). He deserves punishment. But I agree with those who say we should be worried about many aspects concerning the way the man was dealt with. That he's a sleaze we all agree. That's not where work ends - it's where it begins. otherwise, we put ourselves at risk of becoming that ourselves (yes, I'm aware of the difference. It's the similarities I'm concerned with, slight as they may be: we are not he).

Whats so hard to understand?

Anyone is free to hold whatever vile depraved thoughts they want to in their heads, their heads are their own, but we all share this world and so the rest of us don't have to put up with them, if you try to force them on us like that Norwegian nut job the authorities have a duty to crush them.
He was tried and condemned in a court in a democracy, he didn't get a bullet in the back of the head in some secret prison.

If every nutter is free to go around inciting hate society simply won't work and it'll be everyone for themselves as it was in our ancient past.

yuv

the usual complaint is that sentences handed down are not severe enough.
For that reason alone I thought that whatever it is that Stacey said must have been malevolent to the extent that it warranted a severe punishment.

Either you mean that "statistically", or "empirically" concluding that in a way - "they rule easy; this is harsh; therefore it is probably sever", or in a way normatively - you trust they judge leniently, and being impartial you trust they adequately judged hard here.

It's nice that (if the latter is the case in a significant way) you trust judges, and certainly more healthy than trusting politicians for example, but then I guess you should doubly see the worry with making sure they really can and do rule without too much external pressure. To me such pressure almost equates to "irrelevant pressure" (or: more proneness to bias, for example). Particularly true if you don't like the laws they need to work with as their tools. It's not like you give them such a steady ground to stand on to begin with, without good laws.

Whats so hard to understand?

I'm quite sure there are things hard to understand in this, but I'm not sure this is relevant here. Looks to me more like a case of: similarly understand, differently believe. We don't all share the sensation that all is binary stuff, that there are laws and those judged according to them, and either they'er good (comply) or bad (break the law). You sometimes feel there's more to the story, though it doesn't necessarily mean you disagree about what is done in a specific case.

We can easily agree that you can have total freedom within, and limited freedom in public. But - how do you define it? where does something begin to be unworthy? can I really be relaxed knowing "the law does this work for me?" Some say - "yes". Legit. I don't think it's the only legitimate opinion, and even if it somehow were - I certainly don't think our interest with this ends here. But that'll have to do for now.

Burnwinter

What looks likely to be an accurate copy of Liam Stacey's twitter feed is here for anyone interested. Word search "Fuck Muamba" and scroll up for the relevant highlights, as well as a fair bit of backpedalling, claiming he didn't have his phone etc.

This sort of discussion is typical of rights-based thinking I think. To me 'rights' don't have much relationship to the way society works, or is forced to work.

In the past couple of weeks we've had two different threads in which people have invoked the idea of an inalienable freedom to argue for, on the one hand, no punishment for a racist moron, and on the other no Qatari world cup because Qatar is a religious regime in which the sale of alcohol is banned.

What you can say about Stacey is that he wasn't important enough to avoid a jail term. If he'd been Prince Harry, he would've gotten off ok. Based on what I've read, I think he's an idiot who will probably survive, and be suitably chastened by a few weeks in the clink.

In general though the satisfaction of mutually contradictory rights is, if not impossible, complex enough that cases tend to be resolved in the favour of power. To pick an example of gross injustice from the current media cycle, the Trayvon Martin case.

Also, the idea of a category difference between 'speech' and 'action' is philosophically fascinating, but not exactly clear. Makes it hard for me to understand why, though no one would ever advocate 'free' action, some protest the sanctity of every worst instance of 'free' speech.

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