People dies when politicians lie.
People dies when politicians decide what's the truth.
What is proposed here is that the truth is decided on a judicial trial based on facts and proofs.
If you think it will not work because the politicians control the judicial system, then this new law is 100% harmless, because they can already very easily arrest their opponent by just saying "they killed an old lady, let's have a trial to see if they are a murderer".
> decided on a judicial trial based on facts and proofs
Lawyers are expensive. Lawsuits are painful and time consuming.
If you can tie your opponent up in court - whether they win or lose becomes irrelevant - because you prevented them from spending time and money in the campaign. Further, if you have a friendly (or they have a hated) journalist, now you have coverage and headlines that are negative towards them.
Sure, but you can already tie your opponent up in court by accusing them to be drug dealers or having embezzled party money.
It does not happen, because there is a political cost of the public opinion of doing that.
If indeed your opponent has done nothing wrong, it will be obvious to the public and clear that you are a piece of sh*t. If you have enough power that you don't care about that, then you already have plenty of other ways, way easier and efficient, to get rid of your political opponents.
It’s much harder to do that, because it requires evidence of physical conduct. It’s much easier to just label something that’s an opinion to be an assertion of truth that can be prosecuted.
Don't miss the forest for the tree. There are plenty of sentences said by politicians that are easily ground for attacking them for libel. So, if you find excuses to reject some of my example, you can just do a little bit of effort and you will find yourself other examples where politicians had opportunities to attack their opponent based on a superficial accusation.
And also, this is not how it works: you cannot start a trial just by labeling an opinion to be an assertion of truth, the same way you cannot start a trial by just saying "I consider that grass blades are human, so my political opponent who has mown their lawn are murderers". You can bring the case to the authorities, but they will be the one deciding if it's an offense or not, and your political opponent will not be tied up in court until then.
I have a pretty clear understanding that the crazy misuses that some people are pretending will happen are obvious and will not happen because it's basic law making.
It's like saying "they say they want a new law that reduce car speed to Xmph on those new kind of road, it's crazy, it means that they can fine me if I run too fast on GTA5". It does not mean that I have sources or insider knowledge when I say that it is unrealistic because it never happened with plenty of similar and that if they can do that, why don't they arrest you when you run over pedestrians in GTA5.
> I have a pretty clear understanding that the crazy misuses that some people are pretending will happen are obvious and will not happen because it's basic law making.
Then steel man your argument. Every example you give is a wild far-fetched one that is clearly away from any area of ambiguity or debate.
Challenge yourself by looking at the grey areas and explain where the line should be.
That's quite a reversal when you are steel-manning your argument by pretending that the large majority of politicians and legalists in Wales are so much uneducated that they did
not notice this obvious misuse that you, you have noticed.
Just to be clear: there are grey areas in the question of "what is the truth", but this is not new, as "what is the truth" is the job of the judicial system since forever. The judicial system is built around that, around the fact that what is true for someone is not always true for someone else and how to find a good balance.
You presume incorrectly both my reasoning and my conclusion.
I believe 100% that they see and understand how this can be misused. That's their intent. They likely believe this is a weapon they can use against their rivals while also believing it can never be turned against them.
From working in DC for 10 years - through PATRIOT, McCain-Feingold, NDAA (various), and more both on the Hill and at Justice - I learned there are two political parties in DC but not the ones you suppose. It's really incumbents/establishment vs challengers. Prior to 2016, most of the other stuff was just noise.
*Btw, you've been explaining judicial procedure to a number of lawyers on this thread. It's amusing but unproductive.
You know that "they" refer to more than just "the politicians in power", but to the whole people involved, including opposition, small parties, independent law specialists, ...
Maybe you see that from the US point of view where politics is reduced to a pathetic childish power fight. But the fact that in US any single law has the potential to oppress people does not mean that in other places, normal laws cannot be a good thing. The problem is not in this law proposal, the problem is that in US the situation is very bad.
edit: also, are you really saying that they want to manipulate and lie to the citizen and that the best way they've found is to ... make lying to the citizen more difficult? They could push for plenty of laws with the excuse of security or helping the economy or ... that can be misuse to attack their opposition without being able to be used against them. Honestly, if indeed they are pushing this law because they will think it's easier for them to lie with this law than without, they probably not smart enough to use it properly and this law is, again, at worst harmless.
> You can bring the case to the authorities, but they will be the one deciding if it's an offense or not, and your political opponent will not be tied up in court until then.
You forget that the "authorities" are appointed by politicians.
If you're left-wing, would you be comfortable being tried by someone appointed by Trump?
If you're right-wing, would you be comfortable being tried by someone appointed by Biden?
(Please forgive the US references, I'm not familiar with Welsh politics and don't know the names of politicians who would cause similar fear in political opponents there.)
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Edit:
Rather than arguing about hypotheticals or foreign equivalents, let's consider a specific case cited in TFA:
> During the debate, the Labour member Alun Davies accused the leader of the Tories in Wales, Andrew RT Davies, of tweeting a “direct lie” earlier on Tuesday that Labour want to pay illegal immigrants £1,600 a month.
In fact, Labour did pay £1,600 a month to certain immigrants who were seeking, but had not yet been granted, asylum. The only "lie" in question is the use of the term "illegal immigrants". That's the kind of blurry political line that Labour wants to criminalize.[1]
And it's a far, far more blurry line than murder. It's almost certain to be decided solely based on the political beliefs of the judge and jury.
I'm not talking about corruption here. I'm talking about the kind of controversial questions where "truth" is really open to debate.
Again, if the authorities are in the pocket of the politicians, then they could already today declare it's a murder when a politician says their opponent has cut a blade of grass and it is a murder.
This is what I don't understand: if indeed the authorities are in the pocket of the politicians, how this law change anything, they already have plenty of easier way to attack their opponents.
In US, the mentality is very bad and people may have low morality and ethic. In Europe, being appointed by a politician does not mean you will be their lackey.
But it is not even that: it's not like someone can just say "got you! now you will be trialed by my friend Ben". There are several layers before and after that mean that an accusation is only prosecuted when there is a large consensus that the prosecution is justified.
I know that in US the lines are very blurred because each politician is saying "it's a political trial" even when there is credible ground to investigate, but that's more a question of people being uneducated than a real system. In the large majority of the cases (there is always one or two outliers that don't prove much), every big prosecutions on politicians in US are "normal" and would have happened even in a parallel universe where their political opponents were not touching any judicial string.
The “authorities” aren’t “in the pocket of politicians.” But we have seen all over the developed world that they’re human, and not neutral, and suffer from their own ideological biases. Moreover, the “fact checkers” tend to come from the same social and economic class, which heightens their biases.
Again, then this law is totally harmless: if indeed people are biased when they decide if someone lies or not, it does not matter if there is a law on it.
Again: if you are claiming that this law will harm opposition, then you are not saying that "human are not neutral", you are saying that everyone involved in the process are magically all aligned in exactly on side. If there are people biased "in the other direction", then they will be biased to say the accused is innocent, and it cancels out.
The politician said that "[the Welsh government is] dishing out £1,600 to anyone who wants to rock up and claim they are crossing the Channel illegally".
As your article states, on the 635 persons who received this money, only 67 were migrant, the 568 others were not migrant at all.
So, no, it's not a blurry line: they had a grant that was targeting children, with 90% of the beneficiaries being good ol' locals, and this politician invented that they are giving 1600 to all illegal migrants that claim they crossed the Channel illegally, which is totally incorrect any ways you turn it around.
You are incorrect when you say "the only incorrect thing is 'illegal'" (you probably just read the last sentence without realizing that they just say that _some_ migrants got the grant): not only this grant is not going to illegal migrant, it is also not going to all migrants (only a small fraction qualifies), and it's not even FOR the migrants, it is for the children, including, in big majority, the local ones. Additionally, the politician said that you can just "rock up and claim you are crossing the Channel illegally" to get this money, which is obviously not true.
On top of that, this politician was contacted to explain to him that this grant was not for migrant and certainly not given by just rocking up, so he was totally aware that it was misleading. But he continued to insist on his fantasy. So, it is also a good example that this law does not target honest mistake, but people who don't care if what they say is misleading or not.
If what you say is just a "blurred line with the truth open to debate", then the following sentence is also "just a blurred line":
"the Tories are cutting taxes for people who wants to rock up and claim they are crossing the Channel illegally"
just because they indeed proposed to reduce tax in UK. After all, legal migrant will also benefit from this tax cut, and in fact you will not have this cut by "rocking up and claiming you are crossing the Channel illegally", so, by your own standard, this sentence is perfectly fine.
In fact, thank you for bringing this example: this is a good example of how some politicians are stirring fear and hatred based on total fabrications, and it is a good example showing that these politicians should paid the consequences of their actions and be punished.
> What is proposed here is that the truth is decided on a judicial trial based on facts and proofs.
Justice systems are not designed to decide on such broad and open-ended questions that arise in politics all the time. Questions like mask-wearing or not, WMDs in Iraq, Wuhan COVID origins, whether capitalism is harmful or not... does God exist... The list goes on. A much better proposal is to improve public education, fund journalism, enforce transparency in government, separation of corporate lobbying from the state, etc. A final arbiter on "truth" is chilling to democracy, and besides it, violates Godel's Incompleteness Theorems. It's also anti science.
Nobody is asking the justice systems to answer these questions.
I think the problem in the discussion here is that some people see that _in some cases_ we cannot tell what is true or not, and conclude, incorrectly, that the law we are talking about is pretending that in such case, someone will have to say "it's true" or "it's false". That's ridiculous.
If there is no way to know if it's true or false, THE JUSTICE SYSTEMS WILL SIMPLY SAYS "WE CANNOT TELL, CASE DISMISSED".
This idea that there will be a "final arbiter" that will flip a coin for open-ended question is just really really really stupid: the justice system IS ALREADY EXPOSED TO THAT and does not act in this stupid way.
For all of the examples you have given, there are other laws that would allow people to sue. If someone is forced to wear a mask by their boss, they may try to sue based on "abusive employer" laws. If someone believe the capitalism is harmful, they can certainly sue based on "assault and battery". ... They can try to sue, but they will get their case dismissed, not because the justice has answered the question on mask-wearing or whether capitalism is harmful, but because the justice has concluded it's an open question.
But it is not what the law we are talking about is about. It is not "deciding if X is true or false", it is "had the politician indeed the believable proofs that what they were saying was recognized as truth".
You make 2 errors:
1) you don't understand that the conclusion is not "this is true or this is false", but "this is true, this is false, or this is not possible to tell if it's true or false".
2) you don't understand that it is not because it is impossible to know if X is true or false that someone cannot lie about X. It is impossible for me to know how old you are, but if I say "I know that calf is 21 years old", then, I'm lying. Even if you are 21 years old, I have lied, because I did NOT know it. And it is easy to prove it, even if you are 21 years old, as you can demonstrate that I'm not in position to even know who you are.
What is proposed here is that the truth is decided on a judicial trial based on facts and proofs.
If you think it will not work because the politicians control the judicial system, then this new law is 100% harmless, because they can already very easily arrest their opponent by just saying "they killed an old lady, let's have a trial to see if they are a murderer".