You have freedom of speech, just choose to remain silent

Did you know that the UK Government has now banned homophobic jokes? I didn´t.

How is this not a matter that completely attacks the very notion of free speech? What happened to the idea of

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it

What about the episode of Seinfeld when a comedian converted to Judaism just so he could make Jewish jokes? Is it then alright to make a poof joke if you happen to bat both ways or like exploring the chocolate mudslide? Or are all queer jokes banned?

As Mark Steyn wonders, does this mean that Little Britain will be breaking the law? (Check out Steyn´s article by the way, he´s an excellent writer, although probably a bit too small government/personal freedom for many people)

For an alternative point of view on the subject, check out Iowahawk´s post on gay joke smuggling. For me, the punch line is the very last line.

Who decides what should be allowed and what should be banned? Why is it ok to take a statue of Jesus and immerse it in a jar of urine but it´s not so cool to draw a cartoon featuring the prophet Mohammed (who isn´t actually divine, just a prophet for the divine)?

Why is it ok to promote the killing of old people through Euthanasia, but not ok to promote the killing of rapists and murderers through the death penalty?

As Steyn says, this is basically a way for the Government to gather more power and in my opinion that is almost always a BAD THING.

This is all very interesting and I could write a lot more about it, but basically I think you should be able to say whatever you want. If you post something as fact you need to be able to prove it (so those newspapers posting opinion as front page news, sort your shit out!). If you libel someone, you should be accountable. And if you post opinion, it should be properly advertised as such.

cheers

Harry

ps if you do tell people what you actually think, then everyone will know you´re a retard hating, communist loving, mediaeval and brutal monarchy bowing, nuclear proliferation appeasing, Chicago political whore, because your opinions are out in the open for everyone to see. Rather than pretending otherwise until it´s too late.

Obamaaaaaa!!!!!!!!

I was going to talk about Obama in relation to some other post (which has slipped away from me now) but I found this post on a discussion forum about Obama's victory and the ramifications it has for politics in the US, in particular his mobilisation of direct support as opposed to support from the Democratic Party.

The other thing, that they didn't mention, is that a lot of Obama's money may have been dirty. There's very simple procedures in place when recieving internet payments to ensure that identity is correctly verified. Obama instead went with a system of "Oh, if a find a problem later down the line we'll return the contribution", which is all well and good but extremely unlikely to happen.

Anyway, a lot of the consequences for US politics may happen here in Australia as well, although we're a Prime Ministerial rather than Presidential system (and I don't need crap about the constitution thankyou, I mean that Australia has evolved to a system where the Prime Minister controls the power on the basis of control of the legislature). KRudd certainly attracted a great deal of support in the last election but I wonder how much of that was just anti-Howard? His ridiculously high poll numbers would suggest that people actually do like him for some reason though.

Anyway, here's a link to the discussion post I was talking about.

Interesting stuff.

Harry