Posted on 03/30/2012 12:11:22 PM PDT by Steelfish
MARCH 29, 2012 British Freedom of Speech Endangered John Stuart Mill, Where Art Thou? By Charles C. W. Cooke
In Britain, the trend toward the curbing of free expression picked up speed on Monday, when British student Liam Stacey was sentenced to 56 days in prison for posting racist comments on Twitter.
When Premier League footballer Fabrice Muamba had a heart attack during a soccer game and was rushed to hospital, a drunk Stacey took to the microblogging site and spewed a series of racially abhorrent tweets into the ether. Other Twitter users — including sports pundit and former top-flight footballer Stan Collymore — quickly noticed his words and reported Stacey to the police, who arrested him and charged him with incitement to racial hatred a few days later.
When Muamba collapsed, said the judge at Stacey’s trial, “not just the footballer’s family, not just the footballing world but the whole world were literally praying for his life. Your comments aggravated this situation.”
In fact, it is hard to see how Stacey’s words aggravated anything much at all. What he wrote, utterly appalling and unprintable as it was, had bearing neither on the efficacy of Muamba’s life-saving treatment nor on the likelihood of his survival. It prevented nobody from praying for his life or exercising any of their own rights.
And it encouraged nobody to do anything illegal. Sure, what Stacey wrote may have — should have — upset many people. But in a free country, that cannot be a crime.
Explaining his decision to imprison Stacey, the judge noted that he had “no choice but to impose an immediate custodial sentence to reflect the public outrage at what [Stacey had] done.” “To reflect the public outrage”? Translation: British speech law is determined by the sentiments of the mob. ....
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
If Obama is reelected free speech will be gone here too.
Thought crime!!
how heinous.
Hate speech laws work hand in hand with hate crimes laws. If Zimmerman was on tape saying something derogatory of blacks, Holder’s DoJ would have arrested him already. Any Freeper know what the sentence was for that Indian kid in NJ who videotaped his roommate? Did he get the full ten years for embarrassing a gay dude?
IIRC, he hasn’t been sentenced yet.
Britain is dead; think they’ll rule the seas at this point?
Inciting racial hatred in public is illegal in Britain.
Ergo this idiot has been jailed for that.
Inciting racial hatred in public is illegal in Britain.
Too right, go into a mosque or madrassa if you want
to do that.
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