Some things don't change, especially in governmnent. Theresa May has proudly announced that US pastor Terry Jones 'has been on her radar' for some time. She's been keeping a beady eye on him and is now considering banning him from visiting the UK. Not very liberal that really.
Terry Jones is the evangelist who threatened to burn copies of the Koran on the anniversary of 9/11. The English Defence League have invited him to address a rally in February. Regardless of what the EDL and Jones believe they should have the right to freee speech. Neither have threatened violence to my knowledge so let them speak, and be supported or condemned by their own words.
An organisation called Hope Not Hate is leading the campaign to have him banned. I've only had a cursory look at their website but they only seem to condemn extremists on one side, what they regard to be the far-right, and now they are calling Terry Jones a 'pastor of hate'. There is no condemnation of extremist Muslims and their 'preachers of hate'. But that's no surprise, it's yet another front organisation for the far-left who loathe and detest western democracy with a vengeance. Why should an outfit like this, and a woman like Theresa May, dictate who any of us should be allowed to hear speak?
The grounds for banning him are the threat of disorder from opponents. So all anybody has to do now to have somebody banned is to threaten violence if they speak their mind. That's not free speech in my opinion.
4 comments:
ho! Ho! HO! Hope you had a good w/e Gregg Sir!
Apart from the bar on free speech, I think that barring Terry Jones is a tactical mistake by the govt.
Terry Jones is a pastor of a church that gets 50 people on a Sunday. He is just a crank. The EDL discredits itself by having anything to do with this man. He threatened to burn a Koran because he objected to Muslims practising their faith in a society founded on religious freedom.
If I was in Hope Not Hate I would offer Mr. Jones a contribution to his plane fare to come over & make a fool of himself & the EDL. Nothing undermines a cause in the British public eye like an endorsement from a small-town far-right US preacher.
If the govt. had the decency to respect free speech the guy would be forgotten in 5 minutes once people learned he had nothing worthwhile to say.
The unintended consequences of do-goodery diminish us all.
I don't know the speech laws in the UK, but by this logic every Civil-Rights leader, worker, supporter, etc. could have been kept out of Mississippi...the chaos that ensued during and after these events was tremendous. People were murdered.
It's interesting that the EDL have now withdrawn the invitation because of his views on homosexuality and other controversial views. Surely they should have looked into his views before inviting him.
Personally I think the EDL have pulled off a pretty good publicity stunt. I suspect if this character had come over it would have done the EDL no good whatsoever. Now they can claim to be a group of reasonable people who are just opposed to Islamist extremists, such as the bomber in Stockholm.
Anon is right I think...Jones has this tiny church in Hogtown, Fla. that noone had any idea about until his Koran stunt...and nobody would have bothered about him then if the media hadn't made such a big deal out of it.
There were a lot of people begging not to be thrown in the briar patch over that one.
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