A Polish court has awarded Alicja Tysiac $11,000 against a Catholic magazine, Gosc Niedzielny, after the magazine compared her to a child killer and a Nazi. While it is impressive to see a court levy such damages against a Catholic publication in this very Catholic nation, the ruling does raise freedom of speech issues.
Doctors told Tysiac, 38, that she risked going blind if she had the baby, but abortions are illegal in Poland. There are exceptions to protect the health of the mother. However, the gynecologist refused to perform the procedure. She had the baby and lost much of her eyesight. Two years ago, the European Court of Human Rights ordered Poland to pay Ms Tysiac $36,000 in compensation and the magazine charged that she had received money for wanting to kill her baby. The magazine further compared her to Nazi war criminals conducting medical experiments at Auschwitz. The judge awarded her for the magazine’s “contempt, hostility and malice.”
The analogy of the newspaper was obviously wrong and abusive. However, this is part of a trend in the West to criminalize free speech, here and here. For an earlier column, click here. A newspaper should be allowed to make analogies of this kind and Tysiac’s supporters should be allowed to analogize the newspaper to Nazi propaganda.
For the full story, click here
Of course the church is against abortion because then there are fewer yummy little boys for the priests to play with.
Speak of the devil:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/9/25/786540/-Phelps-Family-Cult-Wins!-Court-Throws-Out-Verdict
If there is no limit to how wrong or abusive you can be in purposefully telling insidious damning lies about someone, then there is no such thing as “wrong or abusive” at all, just those with power having it, and those without, not. Anything the powerless do to change the situation is “dangerous”, anything the powerful do to maintain the status quo is “enlightened”.
I long for the day when this same precedent is soundly placed in American jurisprudence, and pregnant women can start suing the hell out of those individuals and groups that seek to terrorize and demonize them.
Gyges.
I will admit that I don’t hate all people who call themselves Christians. A minority of them believe that they are Christians but are misinformed, they are in fact followers of Joshua Ben Joseph of Nazareth aka Jesus of Nazareth.
Jesus of Nazareth is not to be confused with Jesus Christ whom true Christians worship as the son of God. Jesus of Nazareth was a thoroughly disreputable person, in fact evil. He had very stupid ideas about outsiders and those at the bottom of society being entitled to rights, very similar in fact to the modern politically correct concept of human rights. He associated with all the wrong people, if he were around today and not under preventive detention and awaiting trial for associating with terrorists, he would be consorting with prostitutes, drug users and traffickers and members of inferior races. The authorities of his day quite rightly nailed him to a piece of wood as his ideas were dangerously subversive for any properly ordered society. He most likely had hooked nose and dark skin and would if dressed appropriately be able to pass as a Palestinian suicide bomber.
Jesus Christ who replaced Jesus of Nazareth 3 days after the latter’s execution is a figure of impeccable respectability. His picture on Sunday School walls shows long golden hair and beard, pearly white skin and blue eyes. He is a pure bred Aryan, the son of God himself and would be welcome at White House functions, the Vatican, KKK rallies, in Pentacostal Megachurches and the drawing rooms of South American dictators and death squad leaders.
My late father was in fact a Presbyterian Minister and called himself a Christian, but I found very few places where I disagreed with him despite having had reverse Pauline conversion and turning atheist one day as I walked home from school at the age of 13. My father actually described himself as an agnostic. He was one of these followers of Jesus of Nazareth so I don’t hate him. Another person whom I suspect of following the disreputable Jesus of Nazareth is the Reverend Alan Bean of Texas whose blog
Friends of Justice at http://friendsofjustice.wordpress.com/
I strongly recommend. It has detailed discussions with examples on how racism works via the justice system. Jonathan Turley himself could not find so many such magnificently outrageous travesties.
Then a lot of people who call themselves Christians are relatively harmless, being called Christian because they inherited the condition from their parents who in turn inherited it from theirs and so on. The same is no doubt true for many Moslems.
However the most conspicuous Christians are those I term Christian Taliban whose concerns are maintaining in society the proper hierarchy of privilege, keeping losers, niggers and the undeserving poor in their place and especially pontificating about sexual misbehaviour, other peoples not their own. George W Bush is an excellent example of the type, so also would be Osama Bin Laden except for the fact that he is actually Moslem. I also think the terms “God bothering moralizing humbug” and “woman hating fetus fetishist” are appropriate descriptors.
Actually there are quite a few people who call themselves Christians, Moslems or Jews that I actually like, I am willing to consider them honorary atheists and avoid talking religion with them.
No, Carlyle don’t be so inhibited. We want to know what you are really feeling, please don’t repress your urge to free associate…
Carlyle,
Now, I’m as much of an atheist as you, and come from the same place. The thing is, if you assume all Christians and Muslims believe in that sort of rubbish you’re just as blinded by your beliefs as the those you hate.
People are people, and if you made a Venn Diagram of “Christians, Atheists and whatever negative personality trait you choose,” I bet you’d find the same percentage of the area of Atheists contained that subset as Christians.
Isn’t the Catholic newspaper allowed to make this claim and isn’t the woman allowed to sue them for making false statements about her?
I am about to shut down the computer and try to sleep though having been angry blog posting all day I will probably be too aroused/angry to sleep and instead will stay awake meditating on genocide, ethnic cleansing and religious massacres.
I watched an episode of Torchwood tonight in which a woman found out that she was actually a sleeper agent for an alien invasion force preparing to conquer earth.
To find out that I am not actually human but a multi-tentacled crab creature from the Andomeda Galaxy gathering information on whether humans should be exterminated is one of my favourite fantasies. My advise would be do it know before humans get into space and start exterminating intelligent crabs and cephalopods. When humans colonize other planets they won’t even be able to rape the indigines and create half castes to whose lives they will then have to preserve and to which they will have to allocate some value albeit low as they did in cases of human on human conquests.
Actually the only reason that I am not a devil worshiper is that I am an atheist. As an ex-Christian atheist I still use Christian figures of speech. If I ever learn that I am wrong and find that the Christian God exists, I will be off to the Army of Hell recruiting office as fast as I can go.
I used to think that Christianity was the most vile, sick, evil religion in the world, that is until I discovered Islam. Now I say that comparing Christianity is to Islam as is the common cold to HIV/AIDS. I don’t know much about other religions, maybe they are as bad. I have a soft spot for the Jews since they don’t go around converting people though their treatment of the Palestinians leaves something to be desired.
Mespo.
I really like both my cat and my dog, so much nicer than humans. The cat gets chopped leather jacket (fish) and kangaroo mince, I would not torture it by feeding it Christians.
Unfortunately, killing Christians is illegal in Australia just as if they were human, so much as I would like to I can’t go hunting them. Also Australia does not have your crazy second amendment. One of the few sensible things that George W’s little mate John Winston Howard did was pass a decent anti-gun law. Of course he could not have done so without considerable help from Martin Bryant who massacred a sufficient number of people in one go at Port Arthur in Tasmania on the 28th April 1996. This created enough pressure for change whereas the same number of people killed in shooting over a longer period would not have done so. Martin Bryant is serving a life sentence but in my opinion he should get an Order Of Australia Medal and be named Australian of The Year.
http://en.allexperts.com/e/p/po/port_arthur_massacre.htm.
At the time John Howard passed this law I was a supporter, but later became disillusioned with him. He really was an appropriate friend for George W Bush. I won’t say more, Australia has libel laws that make expressing an honest opinion about politicians expensive.
I just appreciate CM’s use of calling out for divine sanction for hating His own worshipers.
Now that’s a mixed message I think any God could get behind.
This does not change the fact that worldwide, the universal feline response is, “Something broke? Don’t look at me. It was the gods, er, dogs fault.”
Cats are notoriously dyslexic.
Carlyle:
“Nero had the right idea, use them as cat food.”
******************
Why are you picking on cats? Do they not get upset tummies from rotten food? They never burned anyone at the stake for witchcraft or heresy.
Oh this article is about Poland, it is still true about the America having an infestation but Poland also has a problem.
I wonder whether there are any positions available for Christian exterminators.
God I hate Christians.
Nero had the right idea, use them as cat food.
You Americans have an even worse infestation than did Rome.
My questions: How did the Catholic magazine get private medical information about this woman? From one of her doctors? Is that legal in Poland?
Elaine:
My impression is that the newspaper picked up on the earlier award for the denial of the abortion, which was public.
Well, well just when you think you have heard everything. The Dr. recommended but a Dr. would not do it. Wow, now defamation and she is blind?