In article <1143133975.198652.96900@v46g2000cwv.googlegroups.com>,
JC399@cox.net wrote:
"Believe me, if there had been something as odious as a public book
burning of any significance it would have been a top news story. "
That still doesn't mean it didn't happen. You may have not noticed it
just like you didn't notice people are still being convicted of
blasphemy even now in Finland.
I follow the Finnish press closely and I know that laws against blasphemy
are still in the criminal codex, but rarely enforced.
One can't know everything :-) The Tampere case was a small news >item
and it involved blasphemy
I would have thought someone who was convicted of a crime right out of
the dark ages would have gotten more press than that.
The "computer terrorism" aspect got more attention than the blasphemy
aspect in the press.
I guess
Finlanders must not care so much about such issues as free speech and
civil liberties.
as well as computer terrorism. "
It's interesting what some people call "terrorism" these days. I was
not aware the crime of flaming was a terroristic act.
Interfering with data communications is a crime in many countries. The man
sent so many messages to the internet chat-room that it was overloaded for
most of the day. The fact that many of the messages were of a blasphemous
nature, and thus offensive to the users of the chat-room, which was
religious in nature, was of secondary importance.
Finland is as secular a nation as the other Nordic countries, but old
traditions restricting blasphemy still persist. But that just proves the
point that I have been trying to make in this forum: absolute freedom of
speech exists nowhere. Restrictions on freedom of speech are culturally
defined and often seem quaint, or even downright silly, to outsiders
unfamiliar with the culture in question. Just as Austria and Germany
prohibit public discourse that would rehabilitate or whitewash Nazism, and
the US prohibits certain types of public discourse containing certain
four-letter words or threats to hijack or smuggle bombs onto aircraft, or
even public joking about such matters, Finland has laws prohibiting certain
types of public discourse that is blasphemous or gives too much
information about, or too positive an image of, alcoholic beverages.
Note that in neighboring Sweden the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Laila
Freivalds, has been forced to resign over her involvement in having the
Swedish government bring pressure on a local website to stop publishing
the offensive Muhammed cartoons from the Jyllands-Posten. Evidently, the
laws in Nordic countries restricting blasphemous public speech do not only
apply to Judeo-Christian sensitivities.
Regards,
Eugene Holman
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