EU wants Australian in jail for opinions expressed in Australia

We read:


"In my view people ought to be free to say things that others find offensive. Many people think you ought to be free to say only the things they agree with and forbidden to express opinions contrary to their own. There is a large contingent of people who want to shackle the mind and padlock the lips. And those authoritarians are found on both the Right and the Left.

But some go further than others. Let us consider the case of a man that many would find odious, Gerald Toben. Toben is a citizen of Australia. He runs an outfit called the Adelaide Institute which many people consider anti-Semitic. I agree with their analysis. Toben is, by all indications, an anti-Semite and travels in those circles.

In Germany the government has passed laws making it illegal to "question" the Holocaust. The law is quite vague. It says one may not "play down" the Holocaust or "defame" the dead. Numerous Jewish historians, however, have played down the numbers of dead during the Holocaust. They said previous estimates were too high. They are not bothered by the law as it is applied selectively. Toben, and others like him, are considered bad people by German law. And perhaps they are. But expressing an opinion doesn't violate any natural right of an individual. As Thomas Jefferson expressed it, opinions neither pick one's pocket or break one's leg. They are not crimes, by which I mean, they violate the rights of no one.

Good thing for Toben that he doesn't live in German, right? Wrong. Mr. Toben lives in Australia where freedom of speech still prevails on the matters he harps about. And he recently was flying through London. But his opinions are not illegal there either. And he never committed the offence of expressing an illegal opinion within Germany itself.

But the EU. issued an arrest warrant anyway. And the British government, under that warrant, arrested Toben on behalf of the German authorities. Germany asserts that Toben expressed his opinions on the internet and since Germans can read the internet they have the right to put Toben on trial in Germany. Note that Germany is claiming world-wide jurisdiction over what opinions one may express on the internet. And it appears the Labour government in the UK is willing to arrest people on behalf of Germany even if the offence is not a offence in England, or in the jurisdiction where the person physically resided when he expressed this opinion.

Source


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