Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Landen - Clairvoyant Justice

Thomas Landen at The Brussels Journal writes,
“If I talked about Muslims the way their holy book talks about me, I’d be arrested for hate speech,” Pat Condell, a British stand-up comedian, says in a youtube video released earlier this week. Mr. Condell, though a comedian by profession, is not joking. He knows how two years ago a British television crew which went undercover in British mosques and taped sermons inciting to violence against non-Muslims, was itself charged by the police and Crown Prosecution Service for “stirring up racial hatred” against Muslims, while the preachers were left undisturbed. According to the police and the public prosecutor the words of the preachers had been “taken out of context,” while the “context” of the makers of the television program was filled in by their accusers: their aim was said to be to stir up anti-Muslim feelings among the public.

Prosecutors and judges are no longer interested in what actually and objectively happened. Instead they focus on the intentions which they claim motivated those who acted. No longer is Lady Justice blind to anything except the facts; she is blind to the facts, but claims to be a clairvoyant about everything else.
Hate Crimes: The Importance of Lady Justice's Blindfold

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