Does freedom of speech excuse preaching hate?

Although the suspicion is that once Assange is in Sweden he'll be whisked of to America to face the death penalty.

Would the UK have imprisoned Terry Jones? After all, Pakistan imprisoned a 14 year old girl for blasphemy. Is this what societies should be doing?

The case has been withdrawn against a BNP candidate for the Welsh assembly election who had been accused of being filmed burning a copy of the Koran.

Sion Owens, aged 41, was charged with a public order offence on Saturday.

When he appeared at Swansea Magistrates Court the Crown Prosecution Service said it was withdrawing the case against him.

But it said that investigations would continue and that "almost certainly other proceedings will ensue."

Mr Owens, from Bonymaen, Swansea, appeared in court from custody.

A BNP candidate for the South Wales West regional list, he was arrested on Friday evening when the force was passed a video recording showing a man burning the Koran.

He was charged on Saturday evening under the Public Order Act.

Joanne Shannon, another BNP candidate also arrested in connection with the incident, had already been released on police bail.

A BNP spokesperson said both would still be candidates in the assembly election on 5 May.

CPS prosecutor Bryn Hurford told Mr Owens to be in "no doubt" that investigations into his actions were continuing and that "almost certainly other proceedings will ensue."

Speaking outside the court, Mr Owens solicitor, Rachel Elimelech, said he was "pleased" and "very relieved to be released from custody".

A student jailed for posting offensive and racist comments on Twitter following footballer Fabrice Muamba's on-pitch collapse has been banned from university for the rest of the year.

Liam Stacey, who has been released from prison after serving half of his 56-day sentence, was told not to return to Swansea University's campus.

Speaking after leaving prison, 21-year-old Stacey expressed deep sorrow for what he had done, saying he had been drunk, and spoke of his shock that his abuse had gone "nationwide". He said his comments had been "disgusting".

Stacey sparked an outcry following Muamba's cardiac arrest in March when he tweeted: "LOL, **** Muamba. He's dead." Other Twitter users immediately criticised Stacey, prompting him to post further offensive and racist comments. He branded some people who censured him as "wogs" and told one to "go pick some cotton". Stacey was quickly traced by police, arrested and jailed by magistrates in Swansea.

He was also suspended from university, where he was a final-year biology student. The university has now imposed a full suspension until the end of the academic year. Stacey, from Pontypridd, south Wales, will be allowed to sit his final exams as an external candidate next year. But even if successful he will not be invited to the graduation ceremony.

A university spokesman said: "We take the actions of this student very seriously, which is why he is no longer part of our campus community."

That's a really snide way of trying to associate me with the Pakistani blasphemy case, which has nothing to do with this.

I think that most countries have different criminal codes. Some even have different legal systems.

In some countries you get arrested quite often for something which is nothing or a minor crime in others.

Some countries so have a larger prison population than others.

I think that in the UK you only can get imprisoned after a verdict by a court.

In Europe, a religious insult is forbidden in Andorra, Cyprus, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Spain, Finland, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Lithuania, Norway, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Russian Federation, Slovakia, Switzerland, Turkey and Ukraine.

The problem wasn't that someone was making the the "movie", I think.
At least, it only became a problem after it was "published".

There is a lot of behavior that is hateful, but should the state punish all hateful behavior?

Article 1 [Human dignity]

(1) Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority.

Romney’s “Lehman Moment”?
By Daniel Larison • September 12, 2012, 1:28 PM

Scott Galupo discerns panic in the Romney campaign’s shameless opportunism last night and this morning:

Before yesterday, the idea that the Romney campaign was “desperate” would have struck me as myopic and overexcited. Now it seems unmistakably clear. The Romney campaign knows it’s losing.

The extraordinary thing is that Romney may have been losing yesterday, but he wasn’t being widely ridiculed and attacked for having practically disqualified himself from consideration. When senior Republican foreign policy professionals start referring to this as his “Lehman moment,” likening it to McCain’s mid-September meltdown in response to the financial crisis, we can see that Romney’s latest attempt to seize on an international event has done significant and possibly irreparable damage to his campaign. Most Americans may not sympathize with Romney’s more aggressive foreign policy, but they might have been willing to believe him to be competent and have good judgment. This blunder undermines his claims to both of these.

Romney has made many foreign policy blunders before now, but this is the only one that has provoked such swift, harsh, and near-unanimous criticism. The most incredible part is that all of this has been self-inflicted. Romney and his campaign volunteered for this by inserting themselves into the story. If it were simply the other campaign or Democratic partisans that were hammering Romney on this, it wouldn’t be any different from previous mistakes, but the backlash hasn’t been limited to his partisan foes. The dishonesty of the original Romney statement and the gall of his press conference this morning have combined to create serious doubts about his judgment and to confirm the impression that there are no limits to his opportunism.

As a practical matter, this episode shows how useless Romney’s main foreign policy theme has been. According to Romney, Obama “apologizes for” America, and Romney won’t. He tried to shoehorn the embassy attacks into this frame, and it didn’t work for at least two reasons. First, Obama didn’t respond to the attacks by apologizing for anything or sympathizing with the attackers, as Romney’s original statement charged, so it was blatantly false. Romney’s position that the U.S. should never “apologize for” American values is almost beside the point. Would this have made any difference to the people assaulting the embassy in Cairo or the consulate in Benghazi? Would the attacks not have happened if Romney had been conducting his own brand of thoroughly unapologetic activist foreign policy? It seems unlikely. Romney might have legitimately questioned the security arrangements for the consulate, for example, or he could have made the fair observation that Libya’s new government is very weak and Libya as a whole has serious security problems, but that wouldn’t have translated into the easy and satisfying point-scoring that Romney seems to prefer. It wouldn’t have fit his ready-made scheme of Obama-as-Carter, but it would have spared him of most of the ridicule he’s receiving now. Now instead of portraying Obama as Carter, he has presented himself as the bumbling McCain figure of 2012.

Let's try this again. Freedom of speech is about defending speech.
It isn't about "spreading" speech or "promoting" speech.

Freedom of speech means that people can express whatever they feel is true.

Once you start telling people what they can and can't say, you no longer have "freedom of speech".

Over here, there's just been a new comedy launched. This is a far healthier way of dealing with the Moslem community.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMESKXubTJo[/youtube]

True, but my post referred to Irishk's question to izzythepush. Izzythepush keeps saying that America should follow UK's example. Irishk wanted to know if this means that the UK would imprison someone for that behavior.

There is a lot of behavior that is hateful, but should the state punish all hateful behavior?

That looks like cheesy shite on a moldy roll. I suppose if a radical group in Egypt blew up the British Embassy to protest this eyeroll tripe, you'd too be fine with that?

I'm not bothered one way or other what America does, so long as it doesn't impact on us.

I was just putting the topic up for discussion, a bit taken aback by all the vitriol though.