Freedom of speech has entered a dark age

[Gold Eagle]

European satellite provider Eutelsat SA says it has stopped the broadcast of several Iranian satellite channels following an order by the European Commission.

The company ordered media services company, Arqiva, to take the Iranian satellite channels off one of its Hot Bird frequencies on Monday.

In a separate statement emailed to Press TV, Arqiva said that the decision was made by the EU Council.

Moreover, head of Public Relations Department of Arqiva, Gary Follows, told Press TV that as a result of reinforced EU Council sanctions and repeated requests by France's broadcasting authority for the permanent switch-off of Sahar 1, which is broadcast in the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) multiplex, the IRIB broadcasts through Eutelsat Hot Bird have been terminated.

The Iranian channels being taken off the air include Press TV, al-Alam, Jam-e-Jam 1 and 2, Sahar 1 and 2, Islamic Republic of Iran News Network, Quran TV, and the Arabic-language al-Kawthar.

Press TV has conducted an interview with Gilad Atzmon, author and writer from London, to further discuss the issue. The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Source:PressTV - ‘Freedom of speech has entered a dark age’

 

[Archdemon]

you are free to whine and you are exercise this right now

 

[TheJewverine]

There is a great irony in having an article on the restriction of free speech being reported by an Iranian government owned and operated news agency...

 

[RFS_Br]

There is a great irony in having an article on the restriction of free speech being reported by an Iranian government owned and operated news agency...

You are not wrong, but that doesn't do away with the fact that the trend regarding free speech in Western countries is negative. See, for example, how the British government toughened rhetoric on social media following the London riots. I mean, what standing does the UK have, then, to, say, criticize China when it cracks down on social media activism, considering that China experiences far more numerous, and worse, riots than the UK?

You're right that the opponents of the West generally do awfully on free speech protection, but Western countries themselves are increasingly losing their ability to complain about them.

 

[Hasbara Buster]

There really never was free speech in the West. It's just becoming worse as each day passes. This just shows that western imperialism is in serious trouble; good times are ahead of us.

 

[Gold Eagle]

There is a great irony in having an article on the restriction of free speech being reported by an Iranian government owned and operated news agency...

Yes, There is a great irony...
Based on Western Freedom of speech, you must not say any thing about ambiguous Holocaust and if you do it so, you'll be sent to jail!! But you can insult other peoples religion, prophet,behaviors and etc. any way you like!
And now when our media talks about facts ,they ban our channels!! It means what We say is right and they want to suppress our legitimate voice!

 

[gambit]

Yes, There is a great irony...
Based on Western Freedom of speech, you must not say any thing about ambiguous Holocaust and if you do it so, you'll be sent to jail!! But you can insult other peoples religion, prophet,behaviors and etc. any way you like!
And now when our media talks about facts ,they ban our channels!! It means what We say is right and they want to suppress our legitimate voice!

What 'irony'?

Laws against Holocaust denial - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Of the countries listed, only two mentioned specifically the Holocaust: Israel and Romania.

The rest have laws that are intended to be prophylactic against the mentality that produced the Holocaust and they are not applicable outside their borders. So if these Western countries have laws that are focused on one area of free speech, the muslim countries can enact laws inside their borders that focus on any are of free speech. And everyone is free to criticize each other. Deal?

 

[Globenim]

What a coincidence.

China just so happens to fill the earth orbit full of Chinese satellites.

I bet there is some free bandwidth in four you to broadcast unrestricted of white men's oppression and information censorship.

You can throw GPS overboard either when you are already at it.

 

[Hasbara Buster]

Roger Garaudy's book was banned in France because he exposed Zionism and western imperialism. What they really mean (but don't say) by freedom of speech is this; "as long as you support and don't expose western states and Israel, you are "free" to say whatever you want".

That's the western understanding of free speech in a nutshell. Roger Garaudy passed away this year; he was one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century. As soon as he became Muslim, he was immediately considered an enemy in France and the West. Nobody wanted to publish his books which criticize capitalism and the current world order in an objective and academic matter. So much for "freedom of speech".

 

[Solomon2]

Roger Garaudy's book was banned in France because he exposed Zionism and western imperialism -

No, it's because France passed a law forbidding genocide denial. American historian Bernard Lewis - who is also Jewish - was convicted by the same law when in France he tried explaining why historians couldn't class the WWI mass deaths of Armenians the same way as they did the holocaust of Jews by the Nazis.

The U.S., of course, has no such restriction on free speech. That doesn't mean everybody's speech or writing is equally valid, especially to policymakers.

As the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan put it, "Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." You don't have the right to propagate lies and expect to have the same right for people to act on them as those who reveal truths.

Since your "busting" consists of propagating lies, that's why you and I are very different people, HB. That's also why your proclamation of the idea of Western free speech is bunk. Why do you think people should listen to you?

 

[RFS_Br]

No, it's because France passed a law forbidding genocide denial. American historian Bernard Lewis - who is also Jewish - was convicted by the same law when in France he tried explaining why historians couldn't class the WWI mass deaths of Armenians the same way as they did the holocaust of Jews by the Nazis.

He didn't say just that -- he said what happened to the Armenians doesn't constitute genocide. Whether this is right or not, is of no import here. What matters is that, under regimes that genuinely protect freedom of speech, people should be free to make their arguments for one case or another. History is a science -- it should be a subject for open discussion. Just as one shouldn't be arrested for denying evolution, the same should apply to any given historical event, even if it is held dear by powerful lobbying groups for propaganda purposes.

I'm with Noam Chomsky on this one: Europeans are dumb and don't really understand the concept of freedom of speech. They think freedom of speech is to allow what you want to allow, and censor what you wanna censor; probably a definition that even "Stalin would have agreed with".

And at the same time France censors those who question either the Holocaust or the Armenian genocide, it has passed absurd laws that demand that the "benefits" of French colonization be acknowledged on discussions of France's imperial past. For Algerians in France, that probably means that they should recognize, for example, that it was to their own good that the native population of Algeria went down by half during the first decades of French occupation. Or perhaps that they should be thanking the French Algerian government for its anti-Muslim discrimination and for the semi-apartheid regime the French imposed for the benefit of the European colonists (the pieds noirs).

The ban against Iranian channels just goes to show, once again, that Europeans don't understand what freedom of speech is. They think it is something that applies only when it comes to insulting disliked ethnic or religious minorities and their culture.

Since your "busting" consists of propagating lies, that's why you and I are very different people, HB. That's also why your proclamation of the idea of Western free speech is bunk. Why do you think people should listen to you?

You're using a very European-ish, un-American definition of freedom of speech yourself, and pretending that this isn't the case. Why should we hear a silly, misinformed, ill-read armchair counter-****** with a clear agenda like yourself?

 

[Hasbara Buster]

He said what happened to the Armenians doesn't constitute genocide. Whether this is right or not

It was no genocide because there were no massacres that were organized/planned/executed BY THE STATE. Most people don't even know the definition of genocide. What about the more recent massacres, for example the brutal French massacres in Algeria and other massacres that EUROPEAN GOVERNMENTS committed? They fiercely reject this, why is that? The French have never recognized the Algerian genocide. They even had the audacity to tell the Algerians; "friends don't talk to each other like that"