From: jkp@cs.HUT.FI (Jyrki Kuoppala)
Newsgroups: alt.society.civil-liberty,talk.politics.misc,talk.politics.drugs
Subject: Re: Coerced Anti-Drug Commercials
Date: 11 Apr 92 12:12:00 GMT
Reply-To: jkp@cs.HUT.FI (Jyrki Kuoppala)
Organization: Helsinki University of Technology, Finland

In article <1992Apr10.000859.994@gnv.ifas.ufl.edu>, jrm@gnv writes:
>Of late, we see an increasing number of so-called 'celebrities' convicted
>of minor crimes being sentenced to creating pro-"War-on-Drugs" TV spots.
>Notables in this category include Paul (Pee-Wee Herman) Reubins and most
>recently rocker Billy Idol. 

Isn't this some kind of a community service?  Could they do it by
working for other public-benefit organizations, like NORML, ACLU or
something like that?

I have no detailed knowledge about this, but I suspect that in
principle (what the laws and papers say) it's just community service
which could be done for anyone, like NORML etc. but in practice it's
an unofficial deal which requires that the community service is a
"conforming" activity, ie. accepted by the central government.  But
since it's not a police written anywhere there's no way for anyone to
really question or repel it.

But that's just a guess.  Anyway, that's the method the political
parties here use to coerce the representatives to vote for the party
line.  The Constitution says that the representatives must vote by
their consciousness and submit to no authority; the political parties
practice coercion in the form of excluding members from unofficial
groups of the party and other harassment.  I believe some years ago
there was an investigation into this, but since the unofficial groups
are not based on any law, the result of the investigation was that
there's nothing exactly illegal going on here and thus no action was
taken.

>No difference exists in principal
>to threatening increased sentences to traffic offenders if they refuse to
>endorse a particular candidate for office or a specified political
>opinion on any subject. 

In the books, there is a difference.  This would correspond to heavy
normal sentences (like jail) for traffic offenders, and an
"alternative option" to get the sentence lowered or lifted altogether
if the offenders will voice a specified political opinion or endorse a
particular candidate.  This apparently is extended to other matters
than political opinions, ie. by giving out parts of your control over
yourself in other respects you can negotiate a deal with the
government.  One example is the recent article about someone taking
antabuse "treatment" (which causes toxic effects when combined with
alcohol) in place of a punishment.

Things like this probably will become more common with time - I expect
that things like movement-trackers, surveillance equipment
(microphones tagged into the person), "voluntary" taps on phones and
other "voluntary" loss of privacy, perhaps even implanted versions of
these, will become common.  And these can be made attractive
alternatives by making the "normal" sentences long and heavy jail
sentences.  The trend also seems to make just about anything illegal,
so any given person cannot go through a day without breaking some
laws.  With these combined, there's just a need to catch any given
person once for any crime and offer the attractive alternative of
"voluntary" total loss of privacy, and we have instant Orwellian
society based on constant surveillance.

//Jyrki
Newsgroups: alt.society.civil-liberty