Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Miscellaneous Joy - Free Speech Edition

- In honour of this blog getting its first real troll (with updated responses you should check out!), I give you this great article "Haters Gonna Hate (And Why You Should Love It)" (via SMH)

-Britain has decided that if it can't fully implement sharia-compliant law, it can at least use hate crimes legislation to generate outrageous sentences for violations of other trivial laws. A soldier was convicted for 70 days for burning a Koran that he stole from the library. Yes, the trivial violation is that he stole a library book. I'm guessing that if you fail to return your copy of a Stephen King novel and burn it, they're not going to throw you in prison, but maybe property rights are the new black. This will be great news to British homeowners, who anecdotally have great difficulty getting the police to be even vaguely interested in investigating non-violent burglaries. The Koran burning was in response to a Muslim man who had previously burned a poppy (a WWI veterans symbol in Commonwealth countries). Apparently he hasn't been prosecuted. Neither, to my knowledge, has this guy. For the poppy guy, I'm sure they could drum up some charge of smoking in a public place or disorderly conduct if they were interested. Which, of course, they aren't.

This blog is of course firmly in favour of people's right to burn Korans, Bibles, flags, poppies, cigarettes, coal, marijuana and anything else. Except burning Cyanoethylene in public places - that shit releases Hydrogen Cyanide, yo! But avoid those censorious PC thugs from the UK government and make sure you've legally purchased your own Koran first! Even if you do think that a library book is bought with stolen taxpayer dollars, courts apparently frown on this form of argumentation.

-Hilariously, non-Muslim groups are catching on to this 'anti-blasphemy' thing too - the photo 'Piss Christ', of a crucifix in a jar of urine, was destroyed by "French Catholic Fundamentalists" (now there's an expression you don't hear often).

Hilarious quote from the museum director:
The gallery director, Eric Mézil, said it would reopen with the destroyed works on show "so people can see what barbarians can do".
Yes, Andres Serrano taking photos of crucifixes in urine is exactly the apex of civilisational achievement. Right up there with democracy, the common law, and the scientific revolution. He's a regular Voltaire, this guy.  

"Brave" artists mocking Christianity while cowering from drawing a cartoon of Mohammed on the one side, angry censorious humourless Christians on the other side - like Kissinger said about the Iran/Iraq war, it's a shame they can't both lose.  In reality, the Christians will go to prison, and Andres Serrano will feign outrage while quietly adding an extra zero onto the price tag of his artworks.


- And in non-free-speech news, apparently there's a new contender for pets even better than the marmoset - tame foxes! (via Ace)

No comments:

Post a Comment