Kiddie Porn

That fifteen Australians were arrested for possession of a video of an 8 year old girl being raped seems obvious and just. Merely possessing the video invokes visceral disgust in most of us.

I am trying to discern a better reason than sheer disgust for punishing them. Punishing those who posses such images may prevent perpetrators from committing criminal acts so that they can be filmed and sold for gain, or distributed to fulfil someone’s exhibitionist ego.

That argument is weaker in the case of the same actions rendered in life-like CGI graphics where there is no victim involved. Merely depicting a crime cannot be the reason for the punishment. Much literature and art depicts crimes of one sort or another.

The reason could be that persons who possess such images are considered more likely to commit other offences against children. However punishing people on the basis of the likelihood that they are likely commit a crime is wrong.

This is a case where I am prepared to give priority to common sense over reason.

Free Speech at the Writers' Festival

One place you would expect free speech to be respected is at a writers' festival. Apparently this is expecting too much of the Sydney Writers' Festival, where censorship reigns supreme.

Utter Nutters

Sharia law, in its traditional form, is per se a crime against humanity. It contains many rules which destroy human rights, including the right to free speech. In the countries where it is fully implemented there are beheadings, stonings and other vile practices masquerading as law Here is a link to an Australian muslim forum which discusses the virtues of the Taliban's approach to the implementation of sharia law.

From the Imam:

Jizya [a tax on non-muslims] is a definitive part of Islam by the clear text of the Qur'an (9:29). So anyone who wants to exclude such defintive parts of Islam is not implementing Shari'ah at all, because they are picking and choosing.

Read it all and weep.

Insulting Islam

Things like this are daily occurences in the Islamic world. The propensity of muslims to silence their critics is an unpleasant aspect of Islam that needs to be curbed if Islam is to be regarded as civilised, rather than as civilisationphobic.

It may be possible to hope for progress within Islamic culture as it comes to grips with the modern world. There is absolutely no excuse for the UN to participate in the whole sordid business by passing resolutions calling for the banning of "defamation of religion". The UNHRC clearly has nothing to do with promoting human rights and everything to do with eliminating them.

Unbelievably, silencing critics of Islam is gaining traction in the west. The Netherlands is prosecuting Geert Wilders for offending Islam. How is it that a country with a long tradition of fostering free speech has sunk so low?

In case you think that this could not happen in Australia, recall that two clerics were tried for offences against Islam in Victoria. The matter was eventually resolved after a number of hearings, and three years of wasted time. The process was the punishment.

We need a National Desecration Day where people can publicly desecrate scriptures of the various religions. It is time people stood up for free speech.

Athens Riot

Primitive cultures respond to the speech and actions of others with violence. In this case offence was taken regarding the destruction of a book, resulting in violent riots.

Western societies are too tolerant of this sort of nonsense. Sadly, the usual response from the west is further curtailment of the speech and action.

More Repression

The goons of political correctness have struck again.

This time it is someone called Brendon O'Connell posting anti-semitic comments on Youtube.

An offensive nutter is not the problem here. It is the actions of the thought-police in closing down free speech that is the problem.

Yes, we know he is a nutter and yes, we know he is offensive, but no, we do not need him fined, locked up, crucified or burnt at the stake. Those things should be saved for those who would squash free speech.

Gruen Fat Ad

I don't see why there is any controversy about this ad at all.

It must be that people are uncomfortable acknowledging their own prejudices.

We all have them. The challenge isn't to ban as many of them as is possible, but rather to understand that we all have prejudices, and that they are not particularly nice.

The Price of Free Speech

If ever proof was needed that free speech is dead in Australia this is it. Anti-semite Frederick Toben has been jailed for exercising his right to free speech. Sadly Australian law does not recognise the right to free speech, a fact explicitly noted by Justice Lander in the Toben case.

Dusgusting as Toben's views are, they are not nearly as disgusting as the operation of the law in this case.

Michael Sexton

New South Wales Solicitor-General Michael Sexton had a piece in today's Australian promoting free speech:

The truth is that almost all countries have unnecessary restrictions on freedom of speech.

The one general exception to this proposition is the US, where a combination of the Constitutional First Amendment and a long history of robust public debate has resulted in the practice of free speech not just its theory.

The answer in Australia is not a bill of rights, because any right to freedom of speech in such legislation would be contradicted by rights not to be vilified on various grounds.

The real answer is to accept that opinions, no matter how offensive to some or all members of the community, should be immune from all civil or criminal proceedings.

Sexton is to be congratulated for his forthright defence of free speech. Free speech is already being kicked to death in this country, and the dogs of censorship are howling for more blood. It is bad enough that such restrictions exist, but it is entirely obscene that many of them are enforced by tribunals where normal legal rules do not apply. In these kangaroo courts the process itself is the penalty.

Sexton quotes Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr as follows:

I think that we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death, unless they so imminently threaten immediate interference with the lawful and pressing purposes of the law that an immediate check is required to save the country..

This is line of thinking appears to have lost favour in the corridors of power where the right to not be offended seems to trump the right of free speech, especially within designated victim classes.