The limits of free speech

April 21, 2006 6:56 PM

Wenyi Wang is being charged with threatening Chineese President Hu Jintao.... Apparently telling a world leader that their time is running out and that everything they do in this life will come back to them is a crime. She was arrested while disrupting Jintao's meeting with Bush at the White House.
posted by rdr (55 comments total)

It shouldn't be surprising that threatening and harassing speech are not protected; in fact, it is right that such forms of speech are criminal. The question is whether Wang's statements qualify as threatening or harassing. I know nothing about this law in particular, but I do know that, in general, the standards for threatening speech are rather high (e.g. you need to make a specific, credible threat, etc.) It may very well be an appropriate question for a jury...
posted by mr_roboto at 7:05 PM on April 21, 2006

BEST OF TEH WEBS!!!11
posted by keswick at 7:05 PM on April 21, 2006

Hey, President Hu, you like apples? Well, I got her number.

HOW BOUT THEM APPLES.
posted by billysumday at 7:08 PM on April 21, 2006

Interesting that there's a harassment law explicitly about foreign officials. I wonder if the sentencing is harsher... or the standards lower.
posted by brundlefly at 7:13 PM on April 21, 2006

Oh man, what a great opportunity to demonstrate how we tolerate criticism of the government in the West by...wait, I'm dreaming again, aren't I?
posted by allen.spaulding at 7:15 PM on April 21, 2006

You know, there was a time when the President of the US wouldn't have kotowed to a foreign potentate and apologized for the free speech of his citizens.
posted by bitmage at 7:17 PM on April 21, 2006

What won't they complain about.
posted by I Foody at 7:20 PM on April 21, 2006

Our president has locked up people for much less...
She could protest in the "Free speach zone" 2 miles down the road.
posted by IronWolve at 7:23 PM on April 21, 2006

"Your time is running out," to Hu, and later, when she screamed "Anything you have done will come back to you in this life."
Unless she was waving a weapon at the same time, these charges are bullshit grandstanding and kissing chinese-president ass. Since when are there 'visiting foreign dignitary exceptions' in the first amendment? This will never see a jury.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Oh, wait. That just means you have the right to stand in front of an audience and give a speech, not be rude. My mistake.
posted by IronLizard at 7:25 PM on April 21, 2006

This isn't the first time. She confronted Jiang Zemin at a 2001 summit in Malta.
posted by homunculus at 7:25 PM on April 21, 2006

Also, can I just say that as much as I hate censorship and the brutal crackdown on dissent that China practices, I hate that I ever have to side with Falun Gong. Falun Gong claims to cure cancer and that extraterrestrials walk among us.

Seriously, it's as if Tom Cruise was arrested for being arrested for being a Scientologist. I hate sympathizing with these people.
posted by allen.spaulding at 7:30 PM on April 21, 2006

Fair enough.
posted by fire&wings at 7:32 PM on April 21, 2006

Everyone here still think one world government/cop (under the UN, say, hypothetically speaking, of course) is a good idea?

Everyone here still think that having government as the sole posessor of small arms is a good idea?
posted by ZenMasterThis at 7:34 PM on April 21, 2006

Huh?
posted by homunculus at 7:36 PM on April 21, 2006

I've never thought either of those things, but what do they have to do with the issue at hand?
posted by brundlefly at 7:37 PM on April 21, 2006

Whoa. The John Birchers are drunk and on Metafilter.
posted by mr_roboto at 7:39 PM on April 21, 2006

ZenMasterThis:

WTF?
posted by swell at 7:43 PM on April 21, 2006

According to (I think) an AP article from earlier today, the prosecutor argued that her speech was equivalent to "shouting 'fire' in a crowded theater."

Some people need to have the First Amendment beaten into them, it seems.
posted by rxrfrx at 7:44 PM on April 21, 2006

there was a time when the President of the US wouldn't have kotowed to a foreign potentate and apologized for the free speech of his citizens

When was that, again?

GWB has never given 2 shits about his citizens' free speech so that part doesn't surprise me in the slightest. What I love is watching him make a show of kissing this cypher's ass. While this "summit" was no Nikon-in-China coup, we did get to see GWB suck it up and do his best to butter someone up. How rare is that? Of course, he did a miserable job of it.

I can't help but see some similarities. Bush refuses to have dinner with Hu but gives him lunch and a 21 gun salute. Bush tells CA he will encourage haste in rebuilding the CA levy system but does not declare a state of emergency. He is drunk with power, sending signals of disfavor right in between the lines of his official policy. What an asshole.

The thing about GWB that really defeats me is the sheer unreality of his presidency. I stand there, stunned, thinking, who the fuck is this bozo? while he turns the key on innumerable national ass-rapes at every turn. I'm like a deer in the headlights. He cracks yet another "aw shucks" joke at yet another press opportunity for his egregious war and I am enraged to the point where I want the terrorists to win.

It just goes to support the old adage: the bigger the lie, the more people will believe it.

The primary lie I see at work is: this wealthy, ivy-league daddy's boy is more fun to have a beer with than John Kerry. I won't take up arms with the PPs of the world who actually think his policies are good, but I'm simply shocked, again, at the number of people who really think this wealthy, priveleged spoiled power-broker is salt-of-the-earth, a regular joe like them. Boy did those folks get taken for a ride. They would have been better off with the career trial lawyer than the oil man, but they're too stunted to know it.

But then, I have always suspected most people were stupid. That seems to be the underlying cause. Who can blame some rich born-again fuck for just stepping in and taking advantage of that?

/rant
posted by scarabic at 7:51 PM on April 21, 2006

"there was a time when the President of the US wouldn't have kotowed to a foreign potentate and apologized for the free speech of his citizens

When was that, again?

GWB has never given 2 shits..."

I believe the implication was that previous presidents wouldn't have kowtowed.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 7:53 PM on April 21, 2006

happy space scarabic, happy space (tho I agree), biggest blow democracy in the US has against it is you have to be a specific type of person to hold high office, which just reinforces the type of problems that don't get solved.
posted by edgeways at 8:06 PM on April 21, 2006

And Wayne Wang was the original skiing Hot Dog.
posted by HTuttle at 8:09 PM on April 21, 2006

-WELL IT SOUND LIKE SOMEONE IS GONNA BE TAKING THAT..."SLOW BOAT TO CHINA"!!
posted by OU812 at 8:30 PM on April 21, 2006

a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in prison and a fine of $5,000.

Does anyone else find the jail time/fine ratio incredibly out of whack? Anyway, it's just a misdemeanor, she'll probably get a couple hundred dollar fine and community service.
posted by delmoi at 8:34 PM on April 21, 2006

[...]she'll probably get a couple hundred dollar fine and community service.

Whaddya mean? I thought that was community service.
posted by 327.ca at 8:54 PM on April 21, 2006

What delmoi said. This is a symbolic move on the part of the US meant to assuage how royally they screwed up the event--misnaming the "Republic of China" (which is Taiwan), Bush grabbing Hu by the elbow like he was a child, and then Cheney falling asleep during a speech by him.

But what gets me is that, once again, Bush loves to point fingers at "evil" countries, but if they trade with us we can overlook their obvious human rights problems. Which is not to say China is the worst country in the world, but like KSA, Egypt, Israel, and many other allies, some countries that abuse human beings are more equal than others. The Bush Doctrine is such a complete farce it sickens me.

The Bush ship is sinking so fast it's incredible. They can't even do protocol correctly, which is the bare minimum necessary for a functional foreign policy.
posted by bardic at 9:43 PM on April 21, 2006

I believe the implication was that previous presidents wouldn't have kowtowed.

Yeah I got that but am still wondering what great defenders of 1st ammendment rights we really have in our history - who ever placed those freedoms above key foreign partners.

Jesus, if you've ever worked in corporate America you're probably used to internal interests being gutted anytime a "key partner" outside needs his anus licked clean. It's not just the govt.

I hear ya, edgeways, but liquid feces finally started lapping upon the doorstep of even my "happy place."
posted by scarabic at 9:59 PM on April 21, 2006

the prosecutor argued that her speech was equivalent to "shouting 'fire' in a crowded theater."

I'm tired of hearing that analogy even when we're talking about real, vicious hate speech. It doesn't match our theory of human nature and responsibility as espoused in our criminal laws. I mean, if I say something and it somehow makes you do x, and I am punishable for it, why are you punishable to the same degree as if you thought of it entirely yourself? It's a bullshit analogy, applicable to very little of human behaviour.
posted by dreamsign at 10:38 PM on April 21, 2006

Let's erase the greater global political issues and just think about the performance the Bush Administration made in standards-of-diplomacy terms.

They either really, really wanted to piss off China in a major way.

OR, they're supremely incompetent.

I said I didn't want to talk about greater issues, but this seems to be the central conundrum of the Bush presidency and everything they do.
posted by cell divide at 10:41 PM on April 21, 2006

This is outrageous. How did this become a law? I'd really like to know who in congress were responsible for this, does anyone know the history on this? Was it part of another bill? I can't believe our President apologized to a guy from a country that harvests the organs of dead prisoners and allows forced abortions on unwilling women. Life is sacred?
posted by Burton at 11:47 PM on April 21, 2006

Protesters force Bush to move Stanford meeting

Secret Service Officers Remove CNN Producer from Hu Photo-Op For Asking Question
posted by homunculus at 12:01 AM on April 22, 2006

If Bush had stuck to his country-boy routine enough to say, flat out, "I'm sorry but in this country we respect the freedom of speech," he would have done far more for cleaning up his image and 'legacy' than any single policy change short of an immediate exit from Iraq would accomplish.

China would not have called in any debts, they would not have changed any trading policies. They can't afford to.

It would have cost him nothing for a world of image-repair and he didn't go for it. More than anything this should implode the image of the intelligent-behind-closed-doors line that his supporters are always shouting.
posted by Ryvar at 12:07 AM on April 22, 2006

Impressive performance by VP Cheney. At his age it is no small thing to be able to read through his eyelids especially without his glasses.
posted by Cranberry at 12:25 AM on April 22, 2006

Everyone here still think one world government/cop (under the UN, say, hypothetically speaking, of course) is a good idea?

Everyone here still think that having government as the sole posessor of small arms is a good idea?

Yes.

Everyone here still taking their medication?
posted by Drexen at 1:03 AM on April 22, 2006

The much more interesting question is how this is going to play out in China for Hu. The whole thing (from the Falun Gong protestor, to the Republic of China name-dropping, to the choreographic miscue) was a gigantic, maybe even face-losing, fiasco for Hu. These sort of formalities are a lot more important to the Chinese, as a symbol that (in their minds at least) they've joined the developed world.

How much of this is going to get back to the Chinese people? You could just say, "Duh, they're a Communist country, they censor the media." Well, first of all, even with the Great Firewall, plenty of stuff gets around on the Internet. I bet you that in a month nearly every Internet-surfing Chinese person will have seen the picture of Bush tugging on Hu's suit and his seam ripping at the shoulder.

Moreover, there's always some byzantine power struggle going on within the senior Chinese leadership. Talk whatever crap you want about the CCP (I certainly do), but Hu Jintao is on the progressive, pro-engagement with the West side. He's been in favor of promoting universal education and eliminating the agricultural tax. If Hu slips because of this, some other guy (Li Peng?) who is a bit more nationalistic or mercantilistic can step up. And both China and the US would be worse off for it.
posted by alidarbac at 2:01 AM on April 22, 2006

Yes.
No.

And god bless that note right above the 'post comment' button.
posted by MarkO at 2:34 AM on April 22, 2006

On topic: looks like Condi needed a snooze herself.
posted by MarkO at 2:38 AM on April 22, 2006

When George H. Bush was president, he stood by and watched the Tiananman Square massacre happen without lifting a finger to help. As the Chinese democracy movement was crushed under tanks, he did nothing. A year later, in a cynical display of his true priorities, he used troops to protect the oil fields of Kuwait and return a king to his throne.

When Wenyi Wang confronted the Chinese with their abysmal human rights record- something no American president in my lifetime has had the courage to do- his son, George W. Bush, rushed shamefaced to apologize to President Hu. It was a toady sniveling before his master, one pretend president kneeling before another pretend president.

If George W. Bush believed even a fraction of his own rhetoric about freedom and democracy, he would pin a medal on Wenyi Wang as the bold embodiment of a free people. He does not. He is a pitiful excuse for a human being, and a shameful excuse for a president.
posted by Jatayu das at 3:33 AM on April 22, 2006

I fucking concur. Freedom and Democracy my fucking ass.
posted by trondant at 4:26 AM on April 22, 2006

In the unlikely event this ever gets to a jury trial, I suspect the defence could be an orangutang that does nothing but eat bananas all day and the jury would still acquit in record time.

These charges are obviously politically motivated and utterly specious. A dyslexic chimp could see that.

Still, I guess Bush must have been in a good mood. He could have declared her an illegal combatant and shipped her off to Guantanamo for the rest of her life :)
posted by kaemaril at 4:53 AM on April 22, 2006

I bet you that in a month nearly every Internet-surfing Chinese person will have seen the picture of Bush tugging on Hu's suit and his seam ripping at the shoulder.

Care to share a link?
posted by NewBornHippy at 5:27 AM on April 22, 2006

So let's see from a factual angle

a) somebody says something about somebody else, exercising freedom of speech in a obviously political context

b) abovesaid isn't your ordinary citizen, she is a chinese doctor that ,allegedly, have tried to become US citizen while living in US for 20 years (how this is possible without naturalization happening, I leave experts the answer)

c) she was charged formally with "knowingly and willfully intimidating, coercing, threatening or harassing … a foreign official performing his duties"

From these facts we can start drawing some preliminary conclusion

1) a law expecially tailored to protect foreign officials is abused by considering -vocifeours dissent- a form of harrassing,thus suppressing constitutionally treasured freedom of speech by using smoke and mirrors, extensive unconstitutional interpretation of law.

2) foreign officials are probably scared silly by vociferous people, because poor them they are not used to dissent, so one must suppress some dissent to ease their staying in front of the cameras, even if one constitutionally treasures right to express tought.

3) a chinese national can't criticize Chinese government while in US , but chinese government can criticize U.S. government for suppressing dissent in U.S. , thus feeling justified in continuing their own repression.


But hey, you want your unexpensive stuff, don't you ? The trade off is constitutional right vs pile of junk you will thrown in garage anyway.
posted by elpapacito at 6:25 AM on April 22, 2006

Look at all the high-flown rhetoric! Suppose we viewed the Bush-Hu encounter as Creditor meets Banker. Would that make the interaction any more understandable to the noble rhetoriticians here?
posted by telstar at 7:39 AM on April 22, 2006

Some American's incessant claims of a "God given right" to "freedom of speech" often make me laugh. The photo in this article pretty much says it all.
posted by Diag at 8:28 AM on April 22, 2006

Under this regime, her first crime was to speak at all.
posted by holycola at 5:53 PM on April 22, 2006

imagethief
eswn
美国在胡总欢迎会上的不和谐音（美国的表现，太没出息）
posted by Treeline at 8:31 PM on April 22, 2006

Would that make the interaction any more understandable to the noble rhetoriticians here?

No it's crystal clear there are economic and financial implications, anything can be seen from such angles. Except that financial or economic angle are NOT the two only angles and aren't costantly the most important ones ; except of course if you work for me telstar, then you shouldn't bother understanding, go make me coffee right ?
posted by elpapacito at 4:13 AM on April 23, 2006

"Our president has locked up people for much less...
"

Oh, FU. That said, if this woman gets sentenced to anything, I will donate money to her defense.
posted by ParisParamus at 4:20 AM on April 23, 2006

except of course if you work for me telstar, then you shouldn't bother understanding, go make me coffee right ?

Right away boss! I went ahead and added some clear yellow flavoring.
posted by telstar at 8:40 AM on April 23, 2006

FU? Fundamentally Untrue? Quite right! The President never locks anyone up. He gets his lackeys to do it instead. Especially when he's on holiday.
posted by kaemaril at 9:08 AM on April 23, 2006

Charged? She's being charged???

Surely they could have just hauled her off to Gitmo. Bush is going soft.
posted by dreamsign at 12:30 PM on April 23, 2006

Dispicable.
posted by Smedleyman at 10:11 AM on April 24, 2006

Does anyone else find the jail time/fine ratio incredibly out of whack? Anyway, it's just a misdemeanor, she'll probably get a couple hundred dollar fine and community service.

No, what you'll see here is an "example." She dared to make a fool of Dubya - after all, a known activist was able to easily get into the White House and harass a visiting foreign president. Heck, she probably influenced the dealings between Bush and Jintao. I'm surprised they didn't try to prosecute her under the USA PATRIOT Act, by fomenting possible terrorism with an obvious "death threat" to Jintao.

Embarassing the aristocracy has always been a crime - so what if that aristocracy was elected?
posted by FormlessOne at 10:24 AM on April 24, 2006

Can't see why anyone should be surprised about Wenyi Wang's fate. George W. Bush would have supported extraordinary renditioning for the Tank Man.
posted by Help Me Impeach Bush at 10:44 AM on April 24, 2006

Whoa. I should never post to Metafilter after a 60-hour week and 3 martinis. Sorry y'all.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 9:12 AM on April 25, 2006