Talk:Legal status of Hawaii/Slander?

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[edit] Slander is Not Okay

Laualoha:If you want to say something about the different approaches to sovereignty, that's fine. But it's not okay to make a terribly exagerated rendition of each leader's "claim to the throne" (not one of these people is trying to be "king", by the way). This is called a straw man, an unacceptable fallacy. And bringing up their arrest history in a way that is clearly slanted to make them look like a bunch of petty criminals is just plain slanderous. That's called an Ad Hominem, and does not help anyone understand the issue.

Being arrested for one's beliefs is part of any major conscious struggle aggainst corruption in the government. I have been arrested in this way; so was Martin Luther King, Ghandi, and Cesar Chavez. I am not a follower of any of the sovereignty leaders you mentioned, but I do not think it is right (and it's certainly not neutral) to portray an activist's sufferings under the government they are fighting as some kind of petty crime. This would be like writing a blurb about one of the students at the Woolworth's Counter sit-ins, saying that he was "arrested for loitering in 1960", without any context about the Civil Rights Movement.

And anyway, those "facts" are totally irrelevant to the subject of the page, which is supposed to be about the Legal Status of Hawai'i.

Mahalo!

Jere:It is not slanderous to report the actual and recorded illegal activities of what are arguably public figures. slander: "Slander is an untruthful oral (spoken) statement about a person that harms the person's reputation or standing in the community." Nothing about the statements you removed was untruthful.

If you would like to work on wording, I'm more than happy to find some sort of compromise - but avoiding the fact that most of the claimants to the throne are convicted criminals is whitewashing, especially since the convictions were not any sort of civil disobedience on the level of Ghandi or MLK.

I suppose my concern is that it is unreasonable to portray these people as tragic victims - they have equal, if not greater rights and privileges than anyone else in Hawaii, solely because of their race. To cast aside their lawbreaking as justified activism is simply not neutral at all.

Please offer some compromise language - I'll try to think of some changes as well, but to whitewash their entire history, especially when they are making claims to the rule of the entire Hawaiian island chain, is a mistake, I believe. Mahalo! --JereKrischel 07:15, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Arjuna:The above definition of slander is correct, but that is not why the material is unacceptable. It is unacceptable because without a more balanced and complex description it is a rather unfair representation of the individuals involved. I am not defending those individuals or their records -- mention of their criminal records is entirely fair game, but not if that is the only material presented. Arjuna 09:22, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Laualoha:Eo. I think that the situation in Hawai'i is very complicated, and that's why it's hard to understand that most of the "criminal history" cited is in fact very political. If anyone wanted to make pages about the people of the sovereignty movement, it would be okay to discuss these "crimes" there, where they could be contextualized, and where their many accomplishments could be mentioned as well. But this is not the right place for it, for the readers' sake as well as for simple fairness. As for the word "slander", I have no problem replacing it with "deliberate character defamation", which is equally not okay. --Laualoha 10:55, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Jere:E kala mai, but defamation is "A false statement that injures someone's reputation and exposes him to public contempt, hatred, ridicule, or condemnation." Nothing on this page regarding the public records of these public people is false, so it is definitely not defamation. (FWIW, slander is spoken defamation, and libel is written or broadcast defamation.)

If you could provide references to their criminal history, that try to explain how it is "very political", it would be most welcome. Of course, we'd need reliable sources - I imagine articles or editorials in major newspapers would be fair game, but I wouldn't think that self-defense manifestos written by those in question would be valid.

Also, if you could add in their "many accomplishments", that would be wonderful too! I don't have information of that type at the tip of my fingers, but it would be good to get more details about these people to balance things out.

Mahalo for all your help, i look forward to your contributions! --JereKrischel 05:56, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Laualoha:Actually, I believe that it is still slander, still defamation, and a red herring besides. Sorry. The definitions you used were correct, however, these are legal definitions. I was not trying to sue you in a court, only to call these statements for what they are; and what they are is, I believe, slanderous. The wikitionary definition of slander is " a false or malicious statement, especially one which is injurious to a person's reputation". Even if the statement were true, it seems pretty clearly malicious to me, and is certainly being used as a discrediting tactic here. Even in the legal sense (and the fact that this is a "legal status" page is irrelevant in this particular context, because the reputations of sovereignty leaders have nothing whatsoever to do with the legality of U.S. political control over Hawai'i), it is slanderous in terms of false light, and is clearly defamation per se, which is recognized as slanderous in the U.S. and other jurisdictions. Furthermore, in slander cases, the burden of proof is on the defendant. In other words, it is up to the person making a defaming claim to prove that it is true, and most of your links don't do that. Aloha, --Laualoha 22:42, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Jere:Slander and defamation are false statements, not true ones. This isn't just a legal definition, this is a dictionary definition.[1] I haven't added this information in any sort of malicious manner, and have no personal grudge towards any of the people mentioned. Whether or not the statement of fact regarding the legal troubles and convictions of these people discredits them is certainly in the eye of the beholder - but to censor that type of information seems dangerous.

I would certainly contest any assertion that these people are being put in a false light, or that I am acting with any sort of malice. Furthermore, "defamation per se" is what sovereignty activists are doing against the United States ("imputations of criminal conduct") [2], not what I am doing by citing their criminal convictions. Neither is the burden of proof on myself - although I would more than welcome it, since these convictions can be easily verified and have been well reported in the media already. In other words, if you have a specific claim that you'd like more references on, I'd be glad to find them for you, although you could probably do the same using google.

I understand that you would like to believe that these statements are slanderous, and that you use the term as a synonym for "offensive to your personal sensibilities", but I'm afraid that "personally offensive" is not a sufficient standard to work with on deciding what to include and what not to include.

I've also fixed the error in wikitionary, making it clear that slander is "a false and malicious statement", as per dictionary.com.

One last thing, if you could please provide references for the material you add, it would help a great deal. Unreferenced statements and assertions don't really help improve the article, and make NPOV very hard to reach. Mahalo! --JereKrischel 08:32, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Section

Arjuna:I know both of you have been working on this section, but I think the whole thing seems schlocky, in bad taste, and reads like it was written someone with a personal vendetta against the individuals mentioned (I'm not saying JK did/does, just that it comes across that way). But more than that, this section adds little of value and should be cut entirely. If this material belongs anywhere (and if it does it should get a major rewrite, with balance so that it does not seem like tabloid gossip), it would be the Hawaiian Sovereignty Movement article. As it exists now, it simply is not encyclopediac. It's garbage, frankly. Btw, editing is not censorship. Only a government can censor. Arjuna 19:44, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Arjuna:Again, I'm in favor of cutting entirely, but for what it's worth, Laualoha's language "asserts a claim" is more NPOV and preferable to "claims to be". The latter sounds like inherent mockery -- i.e. "claims to have been abducted by aliens too!" (None of this is "my thing" -- maybe some of them deserve to be ostracized -- my only point is what reads more NPOV.) Arjuna 19:50, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Whitewashing is not balance - add information, don't censor it

Jere:Aloha Arjuna, please feel free to help add balance to the various sections regarding claimants to the authority of the Kingdom of Hawaii, instead of mass deleting sourced information. Mahalo! --JereKrischel 01:39, 12 August 2007 (UTC)