German Prosecutors to Monitor Madonna’s Show for Religious Insults
16 August 2006 by Sean(Thanks to Lynda for this one.)
Germany to monitor Madonna show
German prosecutors are to monitor Madonna’s concert to determine whether a mock crucifixion could be construed as insulting religious beliefs.
The segment of her tour where she appears on a cross wearing a crown of thorns has provoked controversy in several countries.
Germany goes too far with this shit. Due to their history, to be sure, but come on. Prosecutors monitoring to see if the show insults religious beliefs? That can be fucking prosecuted there? Does that mean this website would be illegal in Germany?
Reminds me of that Austrian guy who went to jail for being a Holocaust denier. He’s an asshole, but it’s free fucking speech, folks! I know some of our European readers have argued with us Yanks about this before, saying we don’t see things the same way because we didn’t experience Nazism on our soil. But I say a free society cannot be free when speech is restricted.
I loved this part:
Prosecutors admit they will rely on media reports of the concert rather than send their own observers.
That’s because they couldn’t get any tickets!
16 August 2006, on 3:55 pm
…could be construed as insulting religious beliefs.
So can George Carlin perform in Germany?
You have every right to believe whatever made up fantasy you want to believe in, but you do not have a right to be protected from someone else criticizing your beliefs. And for a state to get involved and try to shield you by suppressing and punishing such criticism is truly scary. Even scarier, I can see this sort of crap happening here if the majority of people in this country don’t wake up and smell theocracy.
I know some of our European readers have argued with us Yanks about this before, saying we don’t see things the same way because we didn’t experience Nazism on our soil.
That sounds like a cop-out to me. Sort of like they don’t want to take responsibility for their actions and instead blame it on too much freedom. Sounds like a certain country needs to do a little more soul searching and get to the heart of the problems that allowed the Holocaust to happen.
16 August 2006, on 4:19 pm
“That’s because they couldn’t get any tickets!”
Heh heh
16 August 2006, on 4:36 pm
your comment kind of touches on a subject that i’ve thought about before. to be more specific, i think it’s interesting that the political climate of the world makes it impossible to criticize anyone but christians without looking like an ignorant bigot.
you’d have to be a pretty lame atheist to equate criticism of the jewish or muslim religions as being akin to the nazi movement to exterminate the people that actually practice that kind of spirituality. yet that’s exactly how i would feel if i were comfortable raising the same questions of their faith as i do with christians. i’d feel like criticizing those religions would come across as having said that i think they don’t have a right to exist. is that just me being overly sensitive? or do other atheists have the same aprehension about broaching the subject?
16 August 2006, on 5:53 pm
I know some of our European readers have argued with us Yanks about this before, saying we don’t see things the same way because we didn’t experience Nazism on our soil. But I say a free society cannot be free when speech is restricted.
KKK = Nazism! Slavery? Laws that kept blacks at the back of the bus and drinking from different water fountains? That doesn’t count?
Free speech is absolutely 100% necessary to keep a society free. We may not like what someone says, but if we’re free we can say the opposite. Let the listeners or the readers judge the content of our speech/writing, but let it still be freely expressed.
16 August 2006, on 6:29 pm
Free speech is absolutely 100% necessary to keep a society free. We may not like what someone says, but if we’re free we can say the opposite. Let the listeners or the readers judge the content of our speech/writing, but let it still be freely expressed.
What about banning certain types venues? What if certain public speeking engagements consistently end up starting riots where people get seriously hurt and killed (like allowing the KKK to stage marches throughout primarily black commuities)? There are other avenues (like the Internet) to express ideas freely and safe, so would it be okay to ban certain ways of expressing certsin forms of free speech?
16 August 2006, on 7:32 pm
As long as this concert requires an outlay of cash for admittance and is in no way sponsored or endorsed by the government, what gives? Anyone stupid enough to pay good money for an evening with the talentless, faux British, confused Qabbalist hack, Madonna, gets what they deserve. Perhaps if she put a rousing Hutton Gibson holocaust denial to a disco beat…
16 August 2006, on 8:45 pm
Madonna’s pattern tends to be either to shock with sex (promiscuity, erotica, S&M) or shock with religion (burning crosses, meditation/yoga/trance, Kabbala); she’s nothing if not an excellent self-marketer. It worked for her in the past and it’s working for her again now; I’m sure she’d like nothing better than to be banned once more, so Germany’s playing right into her hands. “There’s no such thing as bad publicity,” indeed…
16 August 2006, on 10:04 pm
Can’t we make her our mascot or something? She’d get used to the leash. Really, she would.
What I really meant was. Those fukin Nazi’s are at it again. Trying to run down the common people. Well I for one am a bit upset I tell you.
16 August 2006, on 11:06 pm
What if certain public speeking engagements consistently end up starting riots where people get seriously hurt and killed
People have been injured in riots after football games. The G8 summits inspired riots which led to injury. Abortion clinics have been targeted by protesters who have murdered workers. Tiananmen Square in China 1989 resulted in deaths. Kent State University demonstrations in 1970 became a massacre. Let’s face it. If the subject is volatile enough people will most likely become aggitated enough to cause some damage. It’s the price, unfortunately, associated with freedom. No one ever said freedom was safe and comfortable and risk-free.
There are already laws in place to help maintain safe streets and public spaces. Laws prohibit the use of violence and disturbing the peace. Banning free speech in any venue is not required to enforce those laws. Banning free speech damages communities and injures people in a far more insidious way.
17 August 2006, on 12:05 am
Whoops. My bad. David Irving is Austrian and was jailed in Austria. Corrected above.
Reminds me of an old joke:
Austria… The country that managed to convince the world that Hitler was a German and Beethoven was an Austrian.
17 August 2006, on 2:12 am
There are already laws in place to help maintain safe streets and public spaces
Lynda, I buy that defense. In rethinking the issue, I changed my mind and find you are quite right.
I just thought of another freedom of speech issue — but it kind of stretches the idea of “speech.” Does the ideal sense of speech include the 100% freedom of information exchange as well?
The idea of speech being the free exchange of ideas and “ideas” including “information” as one of its many forms; That being the logic I use to broaden this point — perhaps eroneously.
I am tending to think that freedom of information exchange on the Internet is basically a “100% free exchange” of information and I am not convinced this situation has harmed mankind in any meaningful way (perhaps I need to place the word “yet” here) — despite some of the disreputable uses it has allowed (child porn wxchange, for example) — and I think there have been some very clear benefits to it (GifS, for example)….but I am still having moral conniptions over leaving it as a 100% open forum.
Anyone have any thoughts here?
17 August 2006, on 11:09 am
Where countries have only one ISP available the exchange is not 100% free. For example the United Arab Emirates bans websites that express Jewish and anti-Islamic ideas. China keeps a tight grip of internet content as the Google deal illustrates.
I’m leaning toward the belief that a snake out in the open is easier to spot and avoid than the snake in the grass that can strike from behind. If freedom reigns then all ideas, pros and cons, can and will be expressed so that we have the opportunity to weigh ideas with critical thinking skills. If only one side is allowed to be presented we are prone to an acceptance of ideas based on the comfort level of familiarity.
The people who wrote amendments in the US constitution to guarantee free speech and freedom of the press had experienced life without these freedoms. It’s hard to dispute their judgment given I’ve never had to live under such repression.
18 August 2006, on 8:21 pm
I’m pretty sure David Irving is an Englishman, not a native Austrian. He’s also a fascist asshole, but I agree, it was wrong for Austria to prosecute him; those laws in Germany & Austria need to be repealed. It’s not 1946 anymore; it just gives Neofascists an overblown sense of being “persecuted” by the state. We let the KKK march in this country (and heckle and counter-demonstrate against the bastards all the way, too). And George Seldes and Woody Guthrie might have a thing or two to say about America never having experienced fascists in our midst before.
If you value freedom highly, you have to tolerate a little vice. If you want perfect virtue, you can forget a free society. Freedom is also the freedom to fuck up and/or be stupid; And be held into account for such supidity or fuck ups.
Just my $0.02
26 August 2006, on 6:52 am
[...] Still, does it not again offend free speech? Just telling people to shut the fuck up? There is, I think, a fundamental difference here between how Europeans and Americans view these rights. [...]
9 September 2006, on 1:47 am
Why do religious people think their beliefs(fantasies)should be repected,when they don’t have respect for other peoples beliefs or options. Stuped humans!