The wisdom of our founding fathers – and a reminder of the yoke that they freed themselves from – is once again on display. I wrote last week about the savage slaughter in Itamar, wherein five Jews – including three children, the youngest of whom was decapitated at age four months – was celebrated in the streets of Gaza.
The UK’s admittedly higher profile Melanie Phillips also blogged about this latest bit of barbarism to emanate from the fetid Gazan fever swamps, but her chief target was the legacy media, which mostly ignored the event when they weren’t blaming the victims.
And now she’s facing a government investigation.
Phillips called it as she saw it, but in the UK apparently, truth is no defense to slander.
I have often though that when the constitution was ratified and those reluctant states forced a compromise with the first ten amendments, they numbered them in order of importance.
Somehow I don’t think “Mad Mel” (as the lefties in GB like to call her) is going to back down. Says more about the state of play of the mind-set of the “establishment” and the extent of their PC multi-culti dhimmitude than anything else.
Lex, see the truthmongers: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/aug/17/mandelson-gaddafi-lockerbie-corfu
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1553044/Blair-Gaddafi-and-the-BP-oil-deal.html
Truth hurts, especially when you call it as it is….Brits have a little too much empathy towards the feelings of people who complain about every little slight….This is a warning sign of where we as the US should veer away from….the PC crowd loves to SAY they are for freedom BUT in reality, they are only interested in their ability to control what everyone else says & thinks….Bastards.
Beeb being state owned might be a little conflicted with that internationalist agenda, which some have noted is an abject failure and others noted the end of civil discourse and death of liberty. Good thing we have no such thing hereabouts… well that NPR thing… and Presentdent – UN thing… and… Nuts.
How does that thing about making the right people mad turn out?
“Phillips called it as she saw it, but in the UK apparently, truth is no defense to slander.”
Not just the UK, the entire EU. Hateful thoughts are equally bad, as Mr. Steyn, among others, will attest.
One judge told a defendant, in so many words, that the truth is no defense.
Had no idea the UK had a “Press Complaints Commission.” I expect that’s the kind of thing we would see over here if the push-back against “conservative talk radio” gets any traction.
…Come to think of it, this is the same kind of crap Mark Stein had to put up with in Canada.
It could happen here if we let it, or if BHO and his followers have their way with us.
http://www.marksteyn.com/
I’ve got some great friends over there, and sadly they seem to be doing what so many over here do when confronted with the hypocrisy and double speak – tisk tisk and shake their heads. Go girl, keep speaking you mind.
Her words seem more then enough to say “…the intellectual trend in Britain is a remorseless slide towards a dark age of intolerance, reverting to a reason-suppressing, heresy-hunting culture in which certain opinions are being turned into thought crimes.”
I do believe that as the forces of evil push deeper and deeper into the soul of the UK, and the US, awareness/concern will rise… until a tipping point is reached and then I have no idea what will happen. But I do trust that the few good men and woman will use their god given intelligence and make the right choice. I only hope it’s not too late. And that waiting so long doesn’t create more pain and suffering.
B
General Sir Charles Napier must be rolling in his grave.
Coming to a Republic near you….
The concepts of “hate speech” and “hate crime” are the foundations of such restrictions on free speech in this country. They have codified a violation of the 14th Amendment (equal treatment under the law), and have emboldened those whose objective is to eliminate by statute all who disagree with them. Don’t believe? Check out your Attorney General, the militant racism of Eric Holder. The worst-kept secret in the world is that he will not prosecute, or even authorize investigation of, crimes by blacks. The New Black Panthers out in front of the voting booth with crowbars? Not a crime, he tells us. Bullying in schools? Not a crime if the victim is white. Minority? Self-defined and politically protected victim group? Full powers of government to prosecute the perp. Especially if white.
Yep. “Hate speech”*.
(*Does not apply to union activists in Wisconsin, Dem Congressmen, Helen Thomas, Hollywood celebrities, Louis Farrakhan, or Jeremiah Wright.)
“They have codified a violation of the 14th Amendment (equal treatment under the law), and have emboldened those whose objective is to eliminate by statute all who disagree with them.”
Like parole, felon voting rights, and attempts to keep law-abiding citizens from possessing firearms, the net result of such restrictions has been more crime, providing more demand for trial lawyers, prosecutors and judges.
The cure for such folly is for voters to wake up and weaken the The Lawyer-Political Complex before their self-dealing gains even more insidious power.
http://vigilisa.blogspot.com/2010/08/lawyer-political-complex.html
BTW how come that odd religeous (I think) sect in the US that I saw on a news clip, who picket veterans funerals and spout hatred at them and their grieving relatives don’t get arrested and prosecuted? I presume its because of the free speech thing?
You are ,of course,referring to the infamous the Westboro Baptist Church of Kansas. Its pastor, Fred Phelps, is a disbarred civil rights ATTORNEY. And his adult children? Here:
Daughter: Katherine Phelps (lawyer, license to practice law suspended, estranged from Phelps family)
Daughter: Margie Phelps (lawyer, employed by Kansas Department of Corrections)
Daughter: Shirley Phelps-Roper (lawyer)
Son: Nathan Phelps (“Nate”, gay rights and atheist activist, estranged from Phelps family)
Son: Jonathon B. Phelps (lawyer)
Daughter: Rebekah Phelps-Davis (lawyer)
Daughter: Elizabeth Phelps (lawyer, works at homeless shelter)
Son: Timothy Phelps (lawyer, employed by Shawnee County Department of Corrections)
Daughter: Dorotha Bird (lawyer, estranged from Phelps family)
Daughter: Rachel Phelps (lawyer)
Daughter: Abigail Phelps (lawyer)
It’s equally important to remember that this “sect” in 2007 boasted a whopping 71 members. For perspective, that’s less than the compliment of an Avenger Class Minesweeper.
Hogday, the Supremes recently upheld the First Amendment Rights of this POS group.
http://bit.ly/fRXcyJ
Would it be possible for Britain to prosecute the UNHRC for slander in their publications, as revealed here?
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Editorials/Article.aspx?id=213121
The libel/slander laws in once-Great Britain are difficult for a non-Brit to understand. Truth is a defense against libel, but the burden of proof is on the defendant, not the plaintiff. A good sample case is David Irving’s lawsuit against Deborah Lipstadt a decade ago, after she called him a Holocaust denier. She proved in court that everything she said about him was true, so she won the suit.
However, libel/slander is a civil action brought by the person claiming injury. This is not that. This is a government action investigating a claimed violation of ‘hate speech’ regulations. Which is repulsive to the very concept of ‘freedom of speech’, and I think less of once-Great Britain and its inmates as a result of it.
Actually she proved nothing. Lord Justice Grey made a declaration, in the face of all the evidence to the contrary that Irving is a denier. There was so much perjury in the record against Irving that he regretted not using an Attorney for that fight. That more than anything caused him to lose the suit against Lipstadt.
her “expert” witness, Richard Evans has written some WW2 history that is truly pathetic. The claims that Irving intentionally mistranslated some German records has since been disproven. Evans command of German is truly poor, and he was unable to deal with the questions on 1930-45 German because he was not aware of the difference in idiomatic German from the 3rd Reich period vs now.
I find it amusing that more and more of Irving’s academic critics have been embarrassed by their plagiarism (Kershaw), or poor command of German (Evans) and Irving keeps on driving. In addition, Lipstadt has been shown to have broken British law and stolen things that were seized from Irving and have been ordered returned.
Um, Quartermaster, Irving has made public statements that deny or trivialize the Holocaust. TTBOMK he’s never repudiated those statements. I’ve never read the trial transcript, I’m simply not interested enough to put that kind of time into the subject, but I read a number of articles on the verdict when it came out, and everything I read agreed that the evidence given at trial supported the verdict. If there is any “evidence to the contrary,” I’ve not seen it.
My concern, wolfwalker, is that you seem to accept a priori that prosecuting holocaust deniers is the proper course. If the evidence of the Holocaust is as substantial as presumed (such that you and I, for example, would spend very little energy investigating claims that it was a hoax), then Irving’s arguments will be sidelined by their own irrelevance.
If, on the other hand, he has solid arguments, then they deserve to be heard and not prosecuted.
Prosecuting Irving is lose/lose.
Irving was not prosecuted for Holocaust denial – at least, not in Britain. He filed suit against Lipstadt for libel. I do know that he was later prosecuted and jailed in Austria for “denying the Holocaust.” I’d be lying if I said I agreed with that act by Austrian authorities … but pretending I didn’t enjoy it when he got his head handed to him by Lipstadt and her witnesses would also be a lie.
Zane, I do agree with you. While Germany may be a special case for a number of Historical reasons, putting someone on trial soley, or even ostensibly, for denying that the Holocaust did in fact happen is very wrong precendent. Hardly takes any intelligent person very little time to know otherwise from primary and sequential sources.
May as well prosecute flat earthers, or those that still believe in “Hope & Change”.
Many know in detail from their fathers that were in the ETO during WWII just how real it was (I am one of those). Cannot speak ill of my mother (other than the atrocious haircuts, bowl over the head type, that she inflicted upon me), but I sure do wish she had not thrown away much of what Dad brought back from his all expense paid tour of ’44-’45.
Irving has *never* denied the holocaust. What he has denied is that holocaust took place in the camps. He believes that over 3 million died working on the Russian front. Frankly, there is enough to evidence to question that mechnized muder took place in the camps as all the camps were sites of important war industries.
Another point is the fact that extimates of camp deaths has been sliding down for many years. When I was kid the number of supposed murders at Auschwitz was 4 million with cremation in open pits. Even normal burials were a serious problem at in the Auschwitz area because of the water table, and it is difficult to burn a body at ground level much less in pits. Many of the claims that have been made about the camps have been refuted since I was a kid.
As for trivializing the holocaust, tell me how admitting that jews were imprisoned, with total deaths from typhus in the camps, exposure and overwork on the Russian front over 4 million trivializes it? I find it quite repugnant that people were imprisoned because they were Jewish, Christian (with the number of deaths about equal to those of Jews) took place at all. The only people that are calling such claims “trivializing” are those who have a fiscal stake in it, like Abe Foxman. Such people are just as bad as the Neo-Nazis that utterly deny it.
Irving, however, is not one of them.
And, no I have not met the man, but I’ve read some of his books, starting with PQ-17 in the early 70s. He writes well, and is very commonly plagiarized by other historians such as Kershaw and Evans.
It is true that Irving sued Lipstadt, not the other way around. Reading the transcript of the trial, however, the outcomes does not follow from the evidence.
As for trivializing the holocaust, tell me how admitting that jews were imprisoned, with total deaths from typhus in the camps, exposure and overwork on the Russian front over 4 million trivializes it?
The question contains the answer, Quartermaster.
The generally accepted figure for the number of Jews murdered in the concentration camps is six million, not four. Most people forget that at least the same number of Romani, homosexuals, Eastern European POWs, and other ‘undesirables’ were also killed, bringing the total to somewhere around twelve million. While there were several ‘work camps’ where prisoners died from overwork,starvation, and disease, documents and eyewitness testimony both prove that other camps were set up specifically for mass killing — sometimes in ways that permitted a threadbare excuse of ‘died from overwork,’ but other times prisoners were indeed simply gassed, or lined up and shot, or killed in other ways. Documents show that the filth running the camps planned out how much each inmate was worth, both alive and dead, all the way down to salvaging gold tooth fillings from corpses.
To even suggest that the Holocaust was anything less than an organized, planned operation to wipe out those the Nazis considered ‘subhuman,’ does indeed trivialize it.