I would be interested what the Bitcoin community thinks about recent (and not-so-recent) developments in Austria with respect to activism (and in particular, animal-rights activists). In principle, we Austrians see our country as "free" and "democratic", but since I got a little more involved in these subjects, I'm no longer any confident (much like a lot of people write here about the US). For instance, the "Tierschutzcausa" (see
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/18/animalwelfare.animalbehaviour or
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tierschutzprozess (in German)). Activists were persecuted for colluding in a criminal organisation for legal protests and some acts of crime, which - as they found out later - were not committed by them. They were initially arrested with massive police raids on their homes, were spied upon to great lengths before that, and some 10 millions of Euros of tax payer money was wasted on the persecution. In 2011, all charges were dropped. However, the judge who did that was removed from her post, and instead the persecutor got promoted (in Austria, in particular one major political party is heavily related to industry owners (including who earn their money on animal products or by selling fur clothing), owners of big agriculture businesses and (part-time, for fun) hunters).
Furthermore, the Austrian institution for protection of the constitution devotes a lot of space in its annual report to "extremist animal rights groups" - and because there was not a single crime to report about, they instead listed charges like wrong parking at legal demonstrations, instead of simply not pretending that the particular animal rights group in question (the VgT) was a danger to the constitution. In fact, it can be argued that the merciless (and baseless) persecution of legal demonstrations as well as heavy police presence in particular for animal rights protests in itself is danger to the constitutional rights of free speech and expression, as well as demonstrations protected by the constitution.
Now the highest appeal court ruled that some of the actions had been coercion: Namely to let businesses know of (legal!) planned campaings informing their customer about (truthful) facts relating to their business. The logic is like this: By informing the customers, they might not any longer want to buy at that particular business, hurting its profits. Thus by using this to "pressure" the business into not selling fur any more (or whatever else you want from it), you commit an act of coercion according to Austrian law. This is a completely wrong ruling and surely against the spirit of the law as seen by the broad majority of the population. In fact, if that was indeed true, it would open the door widely for anyone to persecute any NGO which is unpleasant to one's interests, turning the democracy into a police state. See
http://www.vgt.at/ for a lot of news about that.
In response, there's now a bid to charge oneself with coercion because of legal protest actions taken, in order to show how insane this understanding of the law is. Already more than 900 curageous citizens submitted it, it will be interesting to see what the general persecution does on this. However, I really have to admit that I was shocked to notice how I hesitated in supporting that bid because of fear for the consequences ... and precisely such fear (despite being in a nominal "democracy") is what the ruling elite wants to achieve in order to discourage the general population from claiming their rights in a supposedly "free" society.
What do you think about that developments?
BTW, I already asked the VgT whether or not they would want to start accepting BTC donations.
(Which I would love to give.) So far no response, though.
