Saturday, January 12, 2008

The amusing free speech follies

The UK has some odious laws on the books that regulate freedom of speech. They are less stringent than your Communist speech codes found on a typical US campus. The blogger Lionheartfaces the real prospect of jail time for his posts. Additionally, I have been similarly threatened forthe Pseudostinian line of posts.

The irony is that the most blatant forms of bigotry are protected by Commie slight of hand. If youpost about imagined Jewish conspiracies to blow up the WTC you are protected if you use the code words Zionist or Neocon. Thus the folks at Counterpunch are protected from these obnoxious laws by design. The speech codes have zero to do with hateful speech and less to do with common sense,but control of speech by those opposed to Communism or jihad.

Part of the downside of our first amendment is that it protects some odious types. This principal
is abused by Commies, Pornographer and Jihadis in the USA. The general mistake is that the laws do not protect criminal acts like Snuff films, sedition, treason or crimes against groups like gays. The laws in the USA have never protected incitement to criminal acts. Thus when commies call for revolution in the USA they should be jailed and sent to Gitmo. Similarly, any call for a domestic Jihad would also be a criminal offense under US law.

The magic of the US laws is the slight of hand in practice. Americans come in all races and ethnic
groups so even the most rabid forms of anti Americanism are protected. Similarly, Muslims come in all races so the charge that Islamophobia is racist is quite amusing.

Thus the goal of these laws are not to limit offensive speech, merely speech it finds offensive. Thus if I were to become reality impaired and say "Palestinian Arabs are a parasitic class" I would be a jerk and guilty under this idiotic law. Commie approved anti semite Norman Finkelstein "Israeli Jews are a parasitic class". This is true if the Israelis in questions are communist, but a typical slur. Finkelstein has never been barred from speaking in the UK.
The law shouldn't be applied to Finky as the comments were made in the USA. Practically, the coments are part of a blatant pattern that aims to silence a certain type of speech. Have the folks at Counterpuch ever faced scrutiny for Jewish conspiracy foolishness? They do not face scrutiny because the laws allow word games and double standards.

3 comments:

mah29001 said...

I should also mention the Chomskyite wannabe-Norman Finkelstein also visited and met with Hezbollah terror leaders in Lebanon.

Always On Watch said...

Off topic....

Beak,
You are a Blogger of the World!

nanc said...

ZING!

you nailed it, beak.

semantics - it all boils down to who plays the semantics game better.