"After even more heat, the poster had a charge against him delivered with the Berlin police."

Citation please?

"and potentially land them in jail"

Apart from denial of the Holocaust or the Armenian genocide, what topics can land someone in jail?

"This is done in order to facilitate a debate"

It helps to a point, but it's too crude. Ultimately, rather than banning or not banning a comment, people will add metadata to a comment to enable others to decide whether they'd be interested in reading that comment or not.

"like running anti-Semitic caricatures of Moses, or caricatures of Christ. Of course, that probably would have landed them in jail (and they had turned down caricatures of Christ not long before, on grounds that they would be offensive to the public).”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons_controversy#Danish_journalistic_tradition they have posted cartoons about Christ (before the controversy), and (post controversy) holocaust denial cartoons.

I think that Germany, like Canada and other European style countries have limited free speech, viz the holocaust example above.

In the US our First Amendment rights are pretty clearly as unabridged as you could possibly want. I suggest you try to get your laws changed.

As for people running anti-Christian cartoons, please don't make me laugh. Along with white men, Christians are guaranteed acceptable targets for any kind of slander you'd care to invent. Maybe if the Pope's guards had running gun battles in the street and Spanish mothers encouraged their children to blow themselves up you'd see a change.

-NFS

PS – I have removed you from my RSS feed as I read your blog to find out about the topic of your blog, not to read the political meanderings of a sophomore in college.

> As for people running anti-Christian cartoons, please
> don't make me laugh.

Anonymous, please note that I tried to quote many diverse sources not because I necessarily *agree* with their points (in fact I probably can't find any opinion quoted in the post which I would fully agree with, or state in these terms, or undersign etc.) – but in order to get diverse views, including views specifically differing from mine. Indeed I had medium to long back-and-forth arguments with several of the sources cited about things they said, including some of the quotes. For instance, in regards to the point you raise, in my opinion anti-Christian cartoons at least in Germany are far less controversial than cartoons against other religions (though they also often cause debate, e.g. when the cross is appearing in the context of satire).

> "After even more heat, the poster had a charge against
> him delivered with the Berlin police."
>
> Citation please?

Andjam, I know that it doesn't directly answer your question as I decided to keep several persons out of the article for different reasons, but I just consulted with a native English speaker as during the writing I had previously some trouble correctly translating the German "Anzeige erstatten." What happened was that someone pressed charges, which does not determine whether the charges have legal basis – and the charges in this case did not lead to any follow-up from any authority. Perhaps the word "pressing" is a better translation than "delivered with".

A campaign has been started to create sorry movies from Dutch people. See the YouTube results:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=fitna+sorry

Among the stated goals of the campaign is to drive Geert's movie out of the results due to noise, not removal:
http://www.mediamatic.net/article-33851-en.html

Some Reddit commentators think campaign is good, others think it's not:
http://reddit.com/info/6e09j/comments/

[Update: apparently this campaign had already been started before the release of the movie.]

It's one thing to quote someone saying inaccurate things, but shouldn't you set the record straight in such circumstances?

Andjam, are you referring to the quote about Christianity? If so, I think my opinion too is also just subjective, so I don't know if adding more comments would have made the article much more neutral. Perhaps I should have tried, but I also see a risk this would have added too many instances of adding my "last word" whenever something is quoted. But yeah, perhaps I should have tried. If this isn't clear enough, perhaps I should ponder adding a (marked and disclosed) update into parts of the post at a later point.

In any case, I will listen closely to arguments here in regards to the post to reflect adjust my future posting, in particular when the comment is argumentative like yours instead of say a personal attack. And thanks for your views. If you have more comments, please share and I can see into integrating them into the article.

Not Free Speech is overreacting. That whole comment simplifies to "America is great. Other countries are poop. White Christians are the real victims. Philipp sucks at politics so I'm leaving 4EVAR!".

Also, NFS is incorrect. "Unabridged as you could possibly want" means one can express anything and there are no other relevant laws. Verbal and written threats, libel and slander, copyright and trademark violation, and other crimes relating to expression are suddenly NOT CRIMES. Yay! Anarchy in the USA! Woot!

Untrue. The USA's first amendment protections are ALMOST as unabridged as can reasonably be expected in a republic. All expression must be legal before it is protected. And honestly, copyright and trademark law foul these up way more than anything else. Legally we are pretty spoiled and when the laws are working, we have "Free speech with personal responsibility and consequences". When laws fail, interact strangely or contradict, we do illogical, unnecessary, or entirely wrong things.

Voluntary censorship. I don't want to open Pandora's box.

Philipp, you ask good questions, if not new ones. Thank you for inviting debate, but this topic is too big for any one blog or blogger. Maybe you should provide more links to other sites offering more perspective. I wish I could contribute, but I don't have much of a global perspective on this. Any site I recommend would reflect my American bias and my own political views.

> Thank you for inviting debate, but this topic is too big
> for any one blog or blogger.

I wholeheartedly agree. I gave my draft to several people for comments because I had the exact same feeling about this, and will read comments closely to look for re-intregration into the post. I think the post is just one node in the overall discussion the web is having on this at the moment, and the post too perhaps can be considered another draft (in terms of being a blog post with comments and potential updates and edits and so on). I also decided to only link to Wikipedia as single link within the post, as that allows people who disagree with the content of the current Wikipedia entry to change the entry, and even add external links to it, making the link in the post more open.

huh ?? I have been tracking this case.. and they have a turnaround :)-

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=7d9_1206624103

This is slightly off topic, but does speak to Freedom of Speak... and Press and censorship. I just arrived in Beijing and attempted to do my usual daily perusing of LiveLeak, which I have been a member of for over a year, and guess what? Yes, you guessed it, I can't access the site.

People, like it or not, and no matter which religion or faith you associate with, it is highly unethical to talk ill about anyone, slandering and defaming is a serious offense.

I personally believe, and have practiced this, that if I do not know about someone or some belief of someone I know or do not know, I'd rather not speak of it. If I do, I must place whatever I am saying in reference to the context in which that person said or did something.

So if you are talking about Islam saying that you should go about killing people, you should also refer to what was the context of such a statement within the Quran. Likewise, if Christianity allows you certain actions, and not all, then there is a reason why this was done. Search up the Bible, and you'll definitely identify any such Divine Command in reference to a certain situation or event in history.

The very fact of quoting something out of context discredits the person who has made a statement based on such a quotation. It makes no sense. If people are well educated, well-informed, and wise enough to make the best decisions for their businesses and educating and making lives blissful for themselves and their children, it really doesn't come out right if you speak of things you just don't know about, or haven't researched enough on it.

Indonesia to YouTube: Pull “Fitna” or you’re banned!!

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCulture.asp?Page=/Culture/archive/200804/CUL20080402b.html

Looks like YouTube rejects the ban:

<<In response to queries, a YouTube spokesperson said the site allows people "to express themselves and to communicate with a global audience."

"The diversity of the world in which we live – spanning the vast dimensions of ethnicity, religion, nationality, language, political opinion, gender, and sexual orientation, to name a few – means that some of the beliefs and views of some individuals may offend others," she said.>>

"For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people." JFK

By the way. Here is a great comparison of freedom of speech in the US and Europe (in german):

http://usaerklaert.wordpress.com/2006/11/22/free-speech-teil-1-warum-die-usa-holocaust-leugner-schutzen/

MarWi

This is not evident, Not every one can judge. most people are hypnotized by medias.

Fitna is an ill-intentioned attempt to cause damage to ISLAM reputation.

here is a translation to Coran, you can identify context yourself:

   http://www.sacred-texts.com/isl/quran/index.htm

i will give here one example:

verse 8.60 which appeared first in the video:

"Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into (the hearts of) the enemies, of Allah and your enemies, and others besides, whom ye may not know, but whom Allah doth know. Whatever ye shall spend in the cause of Allah, shall be repaid unto you, and ye shall not be treated unjustly."
and just after:

verse 8.61:

"But if the enemy incline towards peace, do thou (also) incline towards peace, and trust in Allah. for He is One that heareth and knoweth (all things)."

   http://www.sacred-texts.com/isl/quran/00808.htm

remain one day to block youtube in Indonesia. youtube does not seem to answer the request.