How can hatred of an idea be made illegal?

no of course not, child-eating would still be an offense.

But so would criticising their religious practices if they found such criticism offensive. Thats my understanding anyway.

It will be illegal to give offense, even if you did not mean to be offensive, and even if what you said was true.

Re: How can hatred of an idea be made illegal?

I wonder why you signed up in the first place. In 1948, when George Orwell wrote his novel 1984, he already knew that zealous Socialists would end up prosecuting "thought crimes". What took you almost 60 years?

Thanks for the link, Walter. The one good thing to say about the bill is that I can still hate you for being a Saupreiss, and you can still hate me for being a Suabian-Bavarian.

Good question Thomas.

Most people here criticise the Labour party because they are no longer socialist.

But maybe Orwell was right. Blair is the new Stalin.

Blair wasn't the PM when the 2 previous bills to protect, respectively, Sikhs and Jews were passed, was he?

No. Its quite complicated actually. Anti semitic language is illegal because Jews are defined by their religion. I.e. the racial and religious group are considered one and the same, so remarks designed to cause offense to a follower of Judaism are illegal under racial hatred laws because that person is a Jew. Similarly with Sihks.

But the govt so ****ed off the Muslims over the war in Iraq, that they deserted Labour en masse at the election. Some idiot thought it might win them back if they brought in a bill to make it illegal to give offense or incite hatred on religious grounds alone.

The govt keeps stressing that they are trying to protect the believer and not the belief. But that is not how it will work in practice. And if you think about it how can you protect the believer from remarks that he finds offensive but by ring fencing his religious beliefs?

And as religion was not defined in the legislation, it gives protection to all sorts of wacky cult groups, pagans, wiccans, satanists, even the Methodists

p.s. Helen, what was the conclusion on height restriction/sovereign airspace? I wasnt paying attention properly yesterday

Steve - as there's no treaty officially separating upper atmosphere from ionosphere from low satellite orbits determination is made by analogy with the treaty on the Law of the Sea.

Legal opinions vary (no surprise there, see link I posted) but the professor I asked thought that alleging Cuba's airspace was violated by the SR-71 flying at 90,000 ft was baseless esp. since Cuba never made such an allegation.

I think I reported everything correctly, but far as I can personally tell it sounded to me like the time-honored law of the high seas (a.k.a. piracy) really applies <G>

Careful there -- you're coming close to hating the idea of passing this bill into law. The Secret Service is monitoring online communities, and we don't want you to get in trouble in the new world order.

Thanks

Have to admit its puzzling. Clearly there must be such a concept of sovereign airspace, otherwise countries would not claim the right to bring down aircraft that violated it. But on the other hand there must be a limit. Or perhaps not. Perhaps countries dont regularly take out overflying satellites because they cant or if they can, dont want to start tit for tat?

Thomas

Wow! I never knew that. Secret services monitoring all I do and say. What a good job I have never in my entire life done or said anything in the least bit controversial, and certainly never ever will, promise.

And if the Thought Police are thinking what I'm thinking, they will know that I have never had a bad thought under the Bad Thought Act 2005.

Since I've been to Suabian part of Bavaria this weekend (mini meeting in Augsburg), I've chanced sides, well kind of, at least :wink:

(And since I today crossed the border between Baden-Würtemberg and Bavaria a dozen times on my 'touristic way back', I think, all there should became a museum with entrance fees for non-Germans, which would fast help funding the federal budget.[Fees could be collected by Northrhine-Westphalians on 1-€-job basis].)

Bah! The two of you will set aside your differences instantly when you hear that I plan to confiscate monies collected by Walter in order to buy back Ostpreussen <G>

<Ostpreußen isn't on our shopping list anymore - too expensive.>

Our laws in the US are worse than the laws in the UK. Our laws allows our government to gather one group of religious people (American citizens) to detain them without charge - for the security of our country.

Cicerone - we only have two of those, Hamdi and Padilla, and both are appealing their detention as "enemy combatants" in the courts.

We had a third, with dual US-Saudi citizenship but he was sent back on condition he renounces the US citizenship.

Hardly a wave of anti-Moslem legislation as your post would seem to indicate.

Where do you think the "ordinary" God fearing decent middle of the road Muslim feels most oppressed right now, UK or US?

serious question. I have no idea

Iran. Jordan. Indonesia.

Anywhere that if you don't raise up your children to be suicide bombers, then you are not religious enough.

Wwwwwell, it's probably more like they'll set up a pseudo-religion (sort of like the Nazis) with their false Messiah, and those who don't rah-rah the guy will get the guillotine.

Check out the URI (United Religious Initiative) for coming "attractions."

thanks real life

uk or us

you said indonesia iran or jordan

is that the country with the big tits?