Tuesday 12 January 2010

Free Speech goes to Hell.

"Here we come, walking down the street,
Get the funniest looks from, everyone we meet.
Hey-hey we're Islamists..."

(Picture radicalised from here)



So, banning Antjam Chowder and his gang of peace lovers (that's the John Wayne style of peace as in 'There ain't nothing more peaceful than a dead man') will stop terrorist supporters, will it?

Just as banning guns stopped all gun crime and banning knives stopped all knife crime and - well, it's just not going to work, is it?

Of course it's not going to work. As Al-Jahom and the Snowolf have said, it's just a step towards banning anyone labelled 'extremist' by the government in power until we get to the sort of government where any opposition party member can be arrested simply for being a member of that party. Like they have in Iran and lots of other places. Labour already tried that with Damian Green but it was too soon. So they're back to baby steps. EDL will probably be in line before the BNP because EDL aren't a political party. Easy targets first.

If they do manage to ban the BNP, they'll soon move on to all the smaller parties. Libertarians are already getting the 'extreme right wing' and 'xenophobe' labels, conveniently placed in public minds ready for future denouncement. The Libertarian Alliance has put out a press release on the matter. It looks perfectly reasonable to me, but read it from the point of view of a Labour/Tory/Libdem Banmeister and you just know they'll get so excited at perceived 'extremist ideas' that their underwear might catch fire. That might be what happened to that airline chap, you know. He could have been thinking of all the things he wanted banned and accidentally set off his Y-bomb. They're probably bursting into flames all over Westminster every day. Anyone have any record of unusually large underwear expenses?

But I digress.

This ban won't work. It won't work because of our government's attitude to bans. They banned guns and knives and now pretend there is no gun or knife crime because there can't be. Those things are banned and therefore have ceased to exist. They banned smoking everywhere and pretend it has no effect on business and that it has improved health. They banned liquids on planes in case someone used them to make an explosive and the loonies simply tucked them into their sweaty bits instead (Another digression - could it be that he misheard the plan, and it was originally 'to blow up Balls?'). Once they ban something it ceases to be a problem in their minds and they won't do a damn thing more about it.

These bans are used to catch people who are no danger to anyone and who will just pay the fine. So merely being in possession of a banned thing - whether you had a nefarious purpose in mind or not - gets you arrested. All this legislation has proved to have absolutely zero success in its stated purpose. It's just there to boost the fines.

The ban on Chowder's group will simply turn it into an unnamed group that meets in secret. Just as the smoking ban has formed Smoky-Drinky places, this ban will form an Islamist speakeasy with no formal name so it can't be subject to the ban. If they manage to ban the BNP, the organisation will simply go underground. If they ban Libertarians, well, that's a loose group anyway and could disappear into the woodwork faster than a Smoky-Drinky place.

Besides, who are these MPs to impose bans? Their EU masters banned the retention of innocent people's DNA and they ignored it. The EU has just banned the stop-and-search-just-because-we-can game and they'll ignore that too. Why would they imagine the people they ban won't just do the same?

Okay, I'm not comfortable with the EU dictating British law but when we have such a worthless band of morons in charge, someone has to do it. It comes to something when it's actually preferable to have British laws dictated to us by another country! Doesn't that just sum up how useless our government is?

So as of Thursday, being friends with Antjam is a criminal offence. I'd like to cheer that but I can't. All I see are those placards saying 'Free Speech go to Hell' and I think, you know, it's heading there very fast now. Antjam is the one who wanted it but Labour are the ones doing it.

So who's the terrorist? A noisy man who goes about wearing a dress and using free speech to tell us we shouldn't have any, or the suited man who has the power to curtail free speech and has just used it?

It's hard to tell.

11 comments:

Tom Paine said...

It was the European Court of Human Rights - a Council of Europe not an EU institution. The European Court of Justice is the EU's highest court.

Leg-iron said...

I always get those mixed up. It's harder to tell them apart than it is to separate a pair of Tory and Labour leaders.

Anonymous said...

Unlimited free speech - really?
From shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theatre to " Your mother wears army boots" to the local rug dealer. A good idea ?
As for propaganda pertaining to pigmented political people - how say you?

John Pickworth said...

Yeah... and the 'People's Front of Judea'!

;-)

Leg-iron said...

Anon 00:09

Oho, the old 'shouting 'Fire in the theatre' ploy. I wish someone would come up with a new one.

Freedom of speech is not freedom to cause damage. You might have freedom to shout 'Fire' in the crowded room but the resulting chaos will be your fault and you will be held responsible for it. Can you grasp that?

An idiot shouting 'Fire' when there is no fire has nothing at all to do with free speech. Not a thing. You could have done it at the height of Nazi Germany or Stalin's Russia. No connection with free speech at all.

Rights come with responsibilities. So if you want to go around calling a whole group of people names just because of their skin colour, you are free to do so but when you find no employer will touch you and your friends make excuses and leave whenever you're around because of that, too bad. It also means that those people you insult are free to insult you back and there's nothing you can do about it.

If you want to shout that killing people because of their skin colour, religion, or anything else is a good thing, that's incitement, not free speech, and is a crime. Can you grasp the difference?

Free speech should apply to everyone. Not just people who agree with you, or with me. I would not silence Antjam but I will call him names because of what he's saying. He is free to call me names right back. I would not advocate violence against him and I would hope he would not advocate it against me.

If I were to silence all those I disagreed with, not one of the MPs in Parliament would ever speak again.

Either you have free speech or you have repression. There's nothing in between.

Junican said...

Wouldn't it have been wonderful if the Islam4UK people had in fact conducted their procession through the streets of Wooton Bassett? I wonder how quickly the local shops would have run out of eggs and flour?
I doubt that Islam 4UK ever had any intention of doing any such thing. What they wanted was publicity and they got it in spades, thanks to the media.
Banning this group is as bad as the media publicity. They will change their name and shout even louder.
Perhaps the authorities should change their strategy. Maybe they should find out where these people get their money from and do them for tax evasion as the Americans did with Al Capone. A ten year stretch for failure to disclose income would have a very interesting effect.

banned said...

I saced them the trouble and banned myself, does not seem to have had much effect though.

JuliaM said...

"But I digress.

This ban won't work."


As MLL points out, it already hasn't worked on a previous occasion...

Sir Henry Morgan said...

Free speech - with the Labour party in charge? Have a read of my experiences yesterday::

http://www.wiganpatriot.blogspot.com/

Sir Henry Morgan said...

Mind you - I must admit I was only slamming the gates shut on an elephant trap.

But the idiots have shown themselves so adept at not spotting such traps that who can blame me for succumbing to temptation.

That's twice now in three days. First one was the best - got one of the twats (I think it might have been that Jockish twat who got caught setting up a dirty tricks campaign against Nadine Dorries via the Labour-supporting website that supposed psychotherapist was at the time running) so angry that he admitted - nay insited it was true - that he had shagged my nine year old daughter. He said it just to make me angry - ended up me making him so angry that he insisted it was true even after I told him she was only nine. Their dirty tricks dept is not what it was - they use psyops black arts on someone who's better at it. Fools.

Well ... I suppose she was nine once upon a time. :)

Pogo said...

the old 'shouting 'Fire in the theatre' ploy. I wish someone would come up with a new one.

Mind you, it's not a bad idea if the theatre actually is on fire!

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