Blasphemy Banned In Eire? Shamnesty Wants It Back!
I do like spiked.com.
The contributors are mostly liberal or left by most people’s definition, but they have a clarity of intellect which is rarely found in rags like the Guardian…
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….and there’s a lack of the intolerance which left-liberals habitually exhibit. A spiked lefty woman’s take on the recent outrageous episodes in America, for example, exonerates The Donald from blame, even though she plainly dislikes him and his policies.
Spiked.com is also educational.
I learned a lot this month from an article about Eire, a country I have little time for, due to its aggressively expansionist aspirations against the British people of Ulster.
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The article vexes me a little, because it insists on calling Eire ‘Ireland,’ which is an all too common error. Ireland is of course a geographical expression, an island, not a nation. It is sheer cheek for the Dublin government to use the word.
But I have covered that ground before…
GAA = IRA? Yes, But A Broken Britain Won’t Mean An Expanded Eire!
…so let’s move on to what I learned, about Eire’s 2009 defamation law, which incorporated a definition of ‘blasphemy’ viz. ‘…grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion.’
Absurd to include such censorious nonsense in the laws of a modern European country, but what shocked me was not that legislation but that “Saudi Arabia and Pakistan both congratulated Ireland…”
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You’d think when two such Dark Age dens made their delight known, any self-respecting democracy would instantly have u-turned and repealed the retrograde rubbish.
That didn’t happen.
But get this, what did happen!
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After the Islamist atrocity at the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris, six years later, certain ‘Islamic leaders’ in Eire showed exactly what sort of intolerant aliens they were, by invoking that very law, to threaten prosecution of any media that reprinted the cartoons.
The craven Eire media quailed before these arrogant sectarians, but plenty of other media in other lands did the same. I won’t single Eire’s out for condemnation at this late date.
But what is absolutely appalling, as the spiked.com writers says, is that ‘one Islamic cleric in one mosque in Dublin was able to make an editorial decision for all Irish media.’.
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After another few years have passed, no such insolent attempts at censoring those media can now be made, for now that ridiculous blasphemy ban is gone.
Good riddance, and good riddance too if any uppity ‘clerics’ decide to leave for pastures more amenable to sectarian censorship!
But hold on just a cotton-pickin’ minute!
Eire too has its Enemy Within, people who want reintroduce a new blasphemy ban, under the guise of ‘hate-speech’ prohibition!
The author of the article is forthright, and identies the jackbooters – ‘Amnesty Ireland and the Irish Council for Civil Liberties.’
There have long been laws in most countries, at least in the Western world, more than sufficient to detain and prosecute anyone who incites violence, arson or similar crimes. Nobody disagrees with those.
But bans on ‘hate-speech’ are incompatible with freedom of expression.
We all have some individuals and organisations we detest. We must be free to say so.
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Think Gerry Adams.
Think the ayatollahs in Iran.
Evil people deserve to be hated.
Ideologies too exist which merit our hatred.
Communism, obviously.
And the ideology of Hizbut Tahrir which puts sectarian supranationalism above loyalty to Queen and Country, and supports sexist injustice to women.
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‘Erase Israel from the World Map!’
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Who doesn’t hate such poisonous thinking?
On another level, ‘hate-speech’ laws are used against those who express a healthy distaste for sexual perversion.
And most recently the degenerates on the ‘European Court of Human Rights’ in Strasbourg, which upheld that Austrian lady’s conviction for ‘insulting religion.’
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/europe-rules-against-free-speech/574369/
Those un-elected ‘judges’ are a menace to freedom in every country which are subject to their intolerant diktats.
Why on earth should people NOT be free to insult ANY religion?
As the spiked.com writer concludes, after noting the repeal of Eire’s ‘blasphemy’ ban, the oppressive and censorious demands of Shamnesty and its ilk would immediately make our vote entirely moot, seeing as hate speech and blasphemy are now essentially distinctions without a difference in Europe.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2018/10/30/ireland-is-still-no-haven-for-free-speech/
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Stacy Stanton, 
Tom Kimber, and 
JazPen are discussing. 
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Gail Perreira is discussing. 
Alain Speren is discussing. 
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Marion James and 
Laurence Heal are discussing. 
Liam is discussing. 
JazPen 8:23 pm on November 8, 2018 Permalink |
This is all good and that European Court ruling was very bad but what about the latest blasphemy rubbish here?
Ross, you cant have missed it and a year or two ago you would have been all over it.
I know the way they sent Ahok to prison was the most depressing thing that has happened here for years but I hate to think you have washed your hands of what is happening to Indonesia.
Tom Kimber 9:21 pm on November 8, 2018 Permalink |
Well said, and no matter where we live, we should all be working to get rid of blasphemy laws and ‘hate speech’ laws everywhere.
The former are medieval relics and the latter are weapons manufactured by the ruling elite to suppress dissent.
Stacy Stanton 2:28 pm on November 9, 2018 Permalink |
That Amnesy-Shamnesty need to be stopped from calling themselves a charity. They are shamelessly political.
Orban in Hungary has the best idea, make those ‘ngo’ gangs declare themselves enemy agents, working for and often paid by the EU.