FREE SPEECH AND MR GALLOWAY
Blasphemy Laws - Because who needs freedom and human rights
when the integrity of imaginary friends is at stake?
George Galloway has been feeling, understandably, sorrow for himself. Only one MP, Caroline Lucas, offered him public support following the brutal assault he recently received in the street. Speaking on Radio 4’s The Week In Westminster he characterises this assault correctly as an attack on free speech. As he said on the programme, “what appals one man thrills and inspires another.” Elsewhere he has spoken of “an attack on dissent.”
I must now make a confession in that in the immediate aftermath of the assault I made light of the affair, cursing whoever assaulted him as being only likely to feed his martyr complex. Any violent attack on someone merely seeking to exercise their right to free speech must be deplored. I think though I was also heavily influence by the complete absence of free speech in Iran and increasingly in Russia, regimes for whom Galloway provides regular propaganda, appearing regularly on Press TV and Russia Today. Every day people are beaten up and worse in Iran and Russia for attempting to exercise a right to speak freely. This is why I now regret my levity, free speech is too precious to treat lightly.
One thing however needs pointing out and that is that for all his outrage about this attack on free speech Mr Galloway doesn’t believe in the concept. He believes in blasphemy laws and other controls on free expression. He doesn’t really believe in free speech either in Russia, Iran, Hamas controlled Gaza or here in the UK.
Blasphemy Laws - Because who needs freedom and human rights
when the integrity of imaginary friends is at stake?
George Galloway has been feeling, understandably, sorrow for himself. Only one MP, Caroline Lucas, offered him public support following the brutal assault he recently received in the street. Speaking on Radio 4’s The Week In Westminster he characterises this assault correctly as an attack on free speech. As he said on the programme, “what appals one man thrills and inspires another.” Elsewhere he has spoken of “an attack on dissent.”
I must now make a confession in that in the immediate aftermath of the assault I made light of the affair, cursing whoever assaulted him as being only likely to feed his martyr complex. Any violent attack on someone merely seeking to exercise their right to free speech must be deplored. I think though I was also heavily influence by the complete absence of free speech in Iran and increasingly in Russia, regimes for whom Galloway provides regular propaganda, appearing regularly on Press TV and Russia Today. Every day people are beaten up and worse in Iran and Russia for attempting to exercise a right to speak freely. This is why I now regret my levity, free speech is too precious to treat lightly. One thing however needs pointing out and that is that for all his outrage about this attack on free speech Mr Galloway doesn’t believe in the concept. He believes in blasphemy laws and other controls on free expression. He doesn’t really believe in free speech either in Russia, Iran, Hamas controlled Gaza or here in the UK.
