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Freedom of Speech for Unpopular People (Read 36726 times)
freediver
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Freedom of Speech for Unpopular People
Jul 30th, 2017 at 11:41am
 
Freedom of Speech for Unpopular People

http://www.ozpolitic.com/articles/freedom-speech-unpopular-people.html

Our freedom of speech is being eroded on several fronts. Broad and ill-conceived legislation has been passed in both state and federal parliaments that is fundamentally incompatible with the right to speak your mind. This is coinciding with extra-legal attacks on our rights, including the use of violence and intimidation. While these attacks often generate significant debate about freedom of speech when they involve violence or celebrities, the denial of basic human rights to unpopular political agitators often goes unnoticed. Yet it is the unpopular, crazy and ignorant people whose rights are most at risk. They are the singing canaries whose silence should warn us of toxic air. As well as undermining our own freedom, making these people genuine martyrs elevates their status by giving them a legitimacy that their views would otherwise not afford.

Blair Cottrel, victim of the Victorian Racial and Religious Tolerance Act

A Victorian man has been charged under state legislation that makes it illegal to “knowingly engage in conduct with the intention of inciting serious contempt for, or revulsion or severe ridicule” of people based on their religion or religious activities. Consider the obscure wording of this legislation. The worst possible outcome envisaged is ridicule and contempt, not violence. Unlike libel and slander, the legislation does not consider the possibility that a person’s religious views deserve ridicule and contempt. Nor does it require the guilty party to actually ridicule anyone. It does not even require the guilty party to incite ridicule. Rather, the legislation makes it illegal to have an intention of inciting contempt or ridicule while “engaging in conduct”. This is about as far removed from actually doing something wrong as it is possible to get.

The man’s name is Blair Cottrel. His ‘crime’ was to make a beheading video as a way of protesting a new Mosque in Bendigo. He has also been charged with defacing a footpath and garden wall while making the video. This crime was committed on October 4, 2015. He appeared in court on March 6 and May 3, 2017 and is due to reappear on September 4, 2017. The legislation was passed by Victorian Parliament in 2001 (Racial and Religious Tolerance Act, Part4, Section 25, the “Offence of serious religious vilification”).

Discussion of Blair Cottrel's case

Antifa

Court appearances by Cottrel are often accompanied by protests from his supporters, as well as counter-protests from various “antifa” (anti fascist) groups. These groups often explicitly use violence and intimidation to disrupt legitimate protests. They are effectively the militant arm of the political correctness movement. After Cottrel’s court appearance in March, Debbie Brennan, a spokeswoman for Campaign Against Racism and Facism, who organised the counter-protest, was quoted in the media as saying "We know the importance of exercising our free speech to stop their hate speech." Such clumsy attempts to redefine freedom of speech are common among supporters of this legislation.

Violent Antifa protestor claims victimhood after being punched in face

Antifa claims victimhood on behalf of Andrew Bolt's attackers

Gerald Fredrick Töben, victim of the Australian Racial Discrimination Act

There has been significant media coverage of the federal Racial Discrimination Act of 1975. In particular, section 18c, added in 1995, makes it illegal to “to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate” people based on “race, colour or national or ethnic origin”. It repeatedly hit the front page after Andrew Bolt was found to have violated the act in 2011. Later, a cartoon by Bill Leak triggered an investigation, until the complaint was withdrawn. Leak died shortly after of a heart attack, after citing the enourmous stress of facing a protracted legal battle over a cartoon. These two cases rightly triggered much public and parliamentary debate about freedom of speech. However, as with Blair Cottrel, the worst legal excesses occurred against the most politically unpopular people. In 2000, Gerald Fredrick Töben was found guilty of violating section 18c by denying the holocaust. Töben refused to comply with court orders and continued denying the holocaust online. He was eventually jailed for what amounts to expressing an incorrect opinion about history.

Discussion of Töben's case

Children targetted in QLD Schools

Education bureaucrats in the State of QLD have started targeting primary school children who talk about Jesus, exchange Christmas cards that mention the birth of Jesus, or encourage Christianity.

Discussion
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Re: Freedom of Speech for Unpopular People
Reply #1 - Jul 30th, 2017 at 11:41am
 
Islam

By far the greatest threat to freedom of speech comes from militant Islam. Where Australian journalists have faced fines and being forced to apologise, as well as countless hours sitting through the plodding bureaucracy of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Islamic extremists have made it clear that no-one in the world is safe from them. Film makers, cartoonists and authors face a very real threat of murder for depicting or mocking the prophet Muhammad. This has already had a significant chilling effect on free speech globally.

However, the direct assault on freedom of speech does not just come from Islam’s fringe. There is broad support among the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims for blasphemy legislation, so it is unlikely that Muslim nations will adopt freedom of speech or other fundamental human rights any time soon. In fact, Muslim nations are trying to strip the rights and freedoms of everyone. For example, in March 2008, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), a group of 57 Muslim nations, tried to get the United Nations to make it illegal to criticise Islam. Luckily, they failed.

More info on the OIC's attack on freedom of speech

In March 2009, a United Nations forum passed a resolution condemning "defamation of religion" as a human rights violation, despite wide concerns that it could be used to justify curbs on free speech in Muslim countries. The U.N. Human Rights Council adopted the non-binding text, proposed by Pakistan on behalf of Islamic states.
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Re: Freedom of Speech for Unpopular People
Reply #2 - Jul 30th, 2017 at 11:44am
 


Well this is what happens when you don't actually have any decent codified human rights.

It's the way the government likes it too.


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Re: Freedom of Speech for Unpopular People
Reply #3 - Jul 30th, 2017 at 12:00pm
 
freediver wrote on Jul 30th, 2017 at 11:41am:
Freedom of Speech for Unpopular People



You seem to have mysteriously forgotten a far more high profile case involving Yassmin Abdel-Magied who made the following facebook post

"LEST. WE. FORGET. (Manus, Nauru, Syria, Palestine …)"

She then deleted the post and apologised for it, but this didn't stop a conservative campaign against her which included:

Pauline Hanson calling for her to be deported
Conservative media and politicians calling for her to be sacked
Right Wing extremists calling for her to be jailed
Nut cases sending death threats and rape threats

She was eventually hounded out of the country

Can't think why you have omitted this blatant attack on freedom of speech  Wink
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The Right Wing only believe in free speech when they agree with what is being said.
 
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Re: Freedom of Speech for Unpopular People
Reply #4 - Jul 30th, 2017 at 12:11pm
 
Calling for her to be sacked is not an attack on her freedom of speech. She should have been sacked instead of given the option of quitting. Image management was her job, and she failed miserably.

She was not hounded out of the country. She did a drama queen exit.
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Re: Freedom of Speech for Unpopular People
Reply #5 - Jul 30th, 2017 at 12:15pm
 
freediver wrote on Jul 30th, 2017 at 12:11pm:
Calling for her to be sacked is not an attack on her freedom of speech.


So you think that mounting a campaign to sack someone isn't an attack on their freedom of speech?

You seem to have a highly flexible attitude to freedom of speech


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Re: Freedom of Speech for Unpopular People
Reply #6 - Jul 30th, 2017 at 12:25pm
 
She was being paid from government coffers in a media job with a job description that presumably included not saying idiotic things on the internet.

If a bricklayer cannot lay bricks, he gets fired. This is not a violation of his right to not lay bricks. Likewise if a media personality cannot manage their public image and refrain from bringing their employer into disrepute, they get fired. She still has the right to say idiotic things on the internet.

There is nothing "flexible" at all in my approach. If Cottrel had a similar job with the ABC, I would not complain about him getting sacked for the stupid poo he does. He is not getting sacked. He is getting charged by the police. Getting dragged through the courts for making a dodgy video is a violation of freedom of speech.
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Re: Freedom of Speech for Unpopular People
Reply #7 - Jul 30th, 2017 at 12:28pm
 
Pro-Israel advocates in Australia targeted three journalists, new book claims

John Lyons says he was put under constant pressure when covering the Middle East for the Australian, and so were ABC reporters Sophie McNeill and Peter Cave

In his Middle East memoir Balcony Over Jerusalem, Lyons says Cave told him another group prepared dossiers on Cave and other ABC reporters “and sent them to like-minded journalists and members of parliament”.

Lyons says pressure also came from inside his own paper. He says the former editor of the Weekend Australian Nick Cater refused to publish his work and the pro-Israel lobby bombarded editors with criticism of his reports.

“I phoned Cater and he confirmed that he’d asked for my work to no longer appear in Inquirer [the Australian’s Saturday opinion section],” Lyons writes.

“I let [editor-in-chief Chris] Mitchell know that, from my point of view, the exclusion from Inquirer was just the latest in a long series of disagreements with Nick Cater … he intervened and told Cater that excluding me from Inquirer was not acceptable.”

Lyons writes that an Israeli embassy official was invited by Cater to the Australian’s head office in Sydney, and told editors that the embassy was not happy with him. “To me the idea of an officer of a foreign government wandering the floor of my newsroom criticising me was outrageous.”

Lyons interviewed Mitchell and others for the book, but Cater declined.

In 2015, AIJAC sent a file on McNeill to Jewish members of the ABC board, including the then chairman James Spigelman, and this file claimed among other things that she was unsuitable because she had said “one of the saddest things I’ve seen in my whole life is spending time filming in a children’s cancer ward in Gaza”.

The then ABC managing director Mark Scott ordered a detailed response from corporate affairs, which he took to the board.

“I will not cower to the AIJAC,” Scott said, according to Lyons.

more :

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/jul/29/pro-israel-advocates-in-australia-...
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Re: Freedom of Speech for Unpopular People
Reply #8 - Jul 30th, 2017 at 12:32pm
 
Not getting published in The Weekend Australian is not a violation of your freedom of speech either. John Lyons gets his opinion out there more successfully than 99% of the population.
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Re: Freedom of Speech for Unpopular People
Reply #9 - Jul 30th, 2017 at 1:32pm
 
freediver wrote on Jul 30th, 2017 at 12:25pm:
If a bricklayer cannot lay bricks, he gets fired. This is not a violation of his right to not lay bricks. Likewise if a media personality cannot manage their public image and refrain from bringing their employer into disrepute, they get fired. She still has the right to say idiotic things on the internet.



Likewise?
You have tried to compare 2 entirely different scenarios. It is a strawman argument.

Ironically though, your dismissal of Yassmin Abdel-Magied's right to freedom of speech because she is unpopular (being both female and a Muslim) actually supports your thread title.
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Re: Freedom of Speech for Unpopular People
Reply #10 - Jul 30th, 2017 at 1:35pm
 
I am not dismissing her rights.

If you cannot do your job, you get fired. This is not a violation of your rights, even if that job happens to involve speaking.
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Re: Freedom of Speech for Unpopular People
Reply #11 - Jul 30th, 2017 at 1:40pm
 
Depends on your definition of "right" baranacle.

I think FD's contention is that reacting to her free speech by calling her to be deported - including by elected politicians, racially abusing her and threatening her with gang-rape, to the extent that she was forced to change her residence - doesn't violate her rights.
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A resident Islam critic who claims to represent western values said:
Quote:
Outlawing the enemy's uniform - hijab, islamic beard - is not depriving one's own people of their freedoms.
 
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Re: Freedom of Speech for Unpopular People
Reply #12 - Jul 30th, 2017 at 1:42pm
 
freediver wrote on Jul 30th, 2017 at 1:35pm:
I am not dismissing her rights.

If you cannot do your job, you get fired. This is not a violation of your rights, even if that job happens to involve speaking.


Writing an inoffensive tweet and expressing her beliefs about sharia had nothing to do with her ability to do her job.

She was intimidated into self-censoring, and her employer was eventually intimidated into terminating her employment.

You know, the sort of self censorship you always cry about - when its muslims causing it.
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A resident Islam critic who claims to represent western values said:
Quote:
Outlawing the enemy's uniform - hijab, islamic beard - is not depriving one's own people of their freedoms.
 
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Re: Freedom of Speech for Unpopular People
Reply #13 - Jul 30th, 2017 at 1:45pm
 
The_Barnacle wrote on Jul 30th, 2017 at 1:32pm:
freediver wrote on Jul 30th, 2017 at 12:25pm:
If a bricklayer cannot lay bricks, he gets fired. This is not a violation of his right to not lay bricks. Likewise if a media personality cannot manage their public image and refrain from bringing their employer into disrepute, they get fired. She still has the right to say idiotic things on the internet.



Likewise?
You have tried to compare 2 entirely different scenarios. It is a strawman argument.

Ironically though, your dismissal of Yassmin Abdel-Magied's right to freedom of speech because she is unpopular (being both female and a Muslim) actually supports your thread title.



She absolutely has a limited right to free speech as do we all, what she does not have the right to, is to be free of criticism for moronic comments.


She has been bubble wrapped in a socialist paradise for so long that when the going gets tough, like out here in the real world she fkks off like emotionally wounded princess.


Yeah people hate because she is rag headed bacon dodger, but so what.? Harden the fkk up and stop being a whinging b1tch.


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Re: Freedom of Speech for Unpopular People
Reply #14 - Jul 30th, 2017 at 1:47pm
 
polite_gandalf wrote on Jul 30th, 2017 at 1:42pm:
freediver wrote on Jul 30th, 2017 at 1:35pm:
I am not dismissing her rights.

If you cannot do your job, you get fired. This is not a violation of your rights, even if that job happens to involve speaking.


Writing an inoffensive tweet and expressing her beliefs about sharia had nothing to do with her ability to do her job.

She was intimidated into self-censoring, and her employer was eventually intimidated into terminating her employment.

You know, the sort of self censorship you always cry about - when its muslims causing it.



Yeah, fkking annoying isn't it?


What goes around comes around, this is a nasty world we live, better get used to it.  Smiley Smiley Smiley



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