Why I am forever centrist
 

http://www.europeandailynews.org/201...s-politicians/
I'm sorry that reporting on Muslim rape gangs that have single handedly increased the odds of women getting assaulted by 5000%, is cramping your self hating "progressive" mojo.

Fuck Sweeden.

you'll find a comfy home in liberal fascism kogutab; spectral syncreticism is the next step up from centrism

they are so tolerant that they tolerate intolerance, i.e, muslims

"I do not think it takes very many prosecutions before a signal is transmitted in the community that the internet is not a lawless country – the sheriff is back in town, said Andreas Norlén, during an unchallenged debate the issue in parliament."

Fucking ridiculous. Yeah fuck Sweden.

I agree that this is potentially very problematic, but the article linked paints a distorted picture of what the actual amendment entails. This isn't something that will help prosecutors go after your average Swedish citizen that decides to make slanderous statements online, but rather something that will help prosecutors have a case against people who are widely published and are in a position where they can very easily slander someone. It's not green-lighting a police state where Swedish authorities can now suddenly go after anyone who says anything bad about anyone online. It's an amendment that acknowledges internet publications are just as valid as any other type of publication, that defamation is very much a part of that too, and that there needs to be a way to curtail and prosecute people who are in a position of power, and who can benefit greatly from slandering their detractors.

The European Daily News article makes it sound like it's simply an attack on civil liberty and freedom of the press - and I agree that these things should be defended at all costs. But bear in mind that this is an article with a sensationalistic byline specifically intended to draw up controversy, and probably not representative of the actual amendment itself. Keep in mind that the people who describe the amendment as a "new law to make it easier to prosecute those who insult immigrants, politicians" could very well be in the business of defamation themselves, and could have very good reason to not want this amendment to pass.

I'm not saying that's definitely the case, but I am saying we should always be skeptical of articles like this and read up on the actual amendment itself, because these kind of articles almost always come from a biased publication. Defamation can actually be a very harmful thing, and it can ruin careers and cost people untold amounts of money.

Here's a recent article on defamation that I thought was pretty interesting:
http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/o...-of-defamation

Sam harris should be more careful about his words. He sometimes is indistinguishable from a dumb blonde fox news commentator when it comes to foreign policy. When he put his sentence in context, I found it virtually no better.

Funny. I thought the exact same thing.

thats a huge troll site imo

Yeah, I can't say I disagree. I was actually thinking after I read his article on defamation that it's not very difficult to misinterpret what he was saying, and he sort of makes himself a target for defamation in that regard. That doesn't excuse the people doing the defaming, but he could certainly be more deliberate in his wording.

I think it was more a statement about self-defense against people who are dead set on killing someone, than it was about religious fanaticism. Sam Harris isn't just a political commentator but he's also a neurologist, so a lot of what he writes about concerns human behavior and things like psychopathy and sociopathy, and how belief plays its part in people who kill others for no discernible reason. It was more a statement that says, "If someone believes they absolutely have to kill you, you might have to kill them in self-defense."

Also, I just stumbled on an interview posted today in which he acknowledges that a lot of what he wrote in "The End of Faith" is very easily taken out of context, and he admits that was partly his mistake as an inexperienced writer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIGX2mo6CuQ#t=3m49s