A Spanish priest is facing up to three years in prison on “hate crime” charges for his heated words about Islam. Catholic News Agency has the story.
Last month, Father Custodio Ballester and two other individuals received a summons from a provincial court in Spain to answer charges of an alleged “hate crime” for criticising Islamic extremism.
If convicted, Ballester could be forced to pay a fine of more than $1,600 and serve up to three years in prison. The charges date back to 2020, when the Court Prosecutor’s Office in Catalonia accused Ballester of a “hate crime” based on what he wrote in a 2016 article titled ‘The Impossible Dialogue with Islam‘.
Four years later, Ballester is still awaiting trial on criminal charges for criticising the faith that he says aims to “destroy” all those who refuse to recognise Mohammed as “the last and ultimate prophet of God”.
“I know Muslims who were not offended and understood perfectly well that I was not referring to them but to those who live Islam in a violent, radical way,” he told CNA.
Ballester, 59, serves a parish in Barcelona within the archdiocese led by Bishop Juan José Omella. He has long been known for his pro-life activism.
“In Spain, ‘hate crime’ was invented and is directed at any speech that directly or indirectly refers to discrimination, encouragement of hostility, or inducement to violence,” Ballester told CNA. Previously, he pointed out, the criminal code was directed at whether someone had actually done something.
Asked whether he is prepared to spend three years in prison should he be convicted on the hate crime charges, Ballester said: “It doesn’t seem right to be convicted for something I’ve said, but in Spain anything is possible. But if I am convicted, this will no longer be Spain but Pakistan, where you can be killed for blaspheming the Koran or Mohammed.”
“There is no longer any true right to free speech in Spain,” Ballester said.
Worth reading in full.
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But, as we know, pro-lockdown “science” is science and anti-lockdown science is conspiracy theories. At east that’s what the Guardian told me.
“Readers are alerted that the conclusions of this article are subject to criticisms that are being considered by the Editors.”
All scientific papers are subject to criticisms. That’s sort of the point of science.
If you don’t agree with it, write a response paper.
yes, its a funny remark
‘the paper is going through a normal review process’
Boris Johnson and the British Government’s respond to covid-19 can be compared to imbeciles trying to micromanage a skip fire.
It’s one of those classic British disasters. The Somme. The Scott South Polar mission. The Comet. Thalidomide. Grenfell Tower.
Arrogance. Ignorance. The class system. And a wildly misplaced sense of intellectual superiority. All conspiring to inflict the maximum amount of misery and suffering on people too gullible and otherwise invested in British cultural bullshit to know when they are about to be murdered.
“Boris Johnson and the British Government’s respond to covid-19 can be compared to imbeciles trying to micromanage a skip fire.”
I like this!
but its hardly a British phenomenon in this case
Leave out the Comet – that was a case of the genuine unknown, not willful malpractice. And the Scott expedition was the risk balance going tits up, rather than the reverse.
I agree with much of what you say, but think that the term ‘class system’ needs to be re-defined.
For many, the class system appears to be some sort of pyramid with aristos etc. at the top and people such as me & the family I was born into at the bottom. That’s the way I saw it as a youth.
Thanks to the good fortune of going to a grammar school, various scholarships, perhaps decisions along the way but probably – mostly – luck, I have had a life that brought me into contact with much of that hierarchy both in this country & abroad. 50+ years after leaving school I still see a class system, but it has little to do with the one I thought I saw as a schoolboy.
The modern ‘upper class’ toffs are the self-serving political establishment. In my experience, psychopaths, sociopaths, narcissists and the like are over represented there. They exist in governments and acadaemia at all levels – look at local council behaviour over the past year. Very few of them seem to come from the traditional idea of upper class (i.e. aristos, public schools etc.), but if you look at their behaviour you see the same psychological traits. Mostly, they seem to be concerned with protecting and extending their own privileged existence. Other countries don’t have the same historical connotations of ‘class’, but they are suffering from the same mis-governance as the UK. They do, however, have the same class system and are burdened with the same consequences.
In a nutshell, Herr Dr Gauss’ distribution describes it. There are a few saints at one end, a few sinners at the other & most of us are somewhere in between. At present, however, governments around the world (not just the Westminster Windbags, but the Whitehall Wormtongues – at all levels) are skewed strongly towards the sinner tail. How to fix that? History doesn’t help, but maybe Mao Tse Tung’s ‘cultural revolution’ had some merit.
Even if lockdowns reduced covid deaths they still wouldn’t be justified
But Imperial’s model shows lockdowns increase covid deaths
Plus lockdown deaths
Should have stuck to the normal pandemic response plan – after all it was designed for something like this
Good article by Will Jones, ‘new study confirms lockdowns don’t reduce covid deaths’
The studies continue to show lockdowns don’t work from a data analysis perspective.
And as Will explains there are many solid scientific reasons to explain why they don’t work and even could make things worse, although it’s clearly multi-factorial and hard to pin down the inter-related contributions of each factor.
And that’s before you consider all the indirect deaths caused by enforced lockdowns, and the damage caused by destroying freedoms and societies.
The sad thing is that if the government and the concensus opinion of the science industry (which I take to mean conflicted ‘scientists’ failing to apply the scientific method of testing hypotheses) tell us lockdowns do work, it seems that most people will just believe the government and science industry. And the mainstream media are set up to communicate this one sided narrative only. How much evidence there is is irrelevant, if it is simply ignored.
All we can do is to try and communicate the reality through whatever means we can find. But at the moment it’s simply not enough.
I would like to think most people don’t want to live this way and that’s the only real force that will get us out of this mess.
You’ve touched on what is the key central point : Lock-ups can only be justified if there is clear, indisputable evidence of a beneficial effect that outweighs the massive costs. We’re not talking about marginal effects that are hard to discern.
In fact, there is increasing evidence that the effects of lock-up are entirely on the debit side – and that obviously increases as time goes on.
So – the case against lock-ups is clear : they have no benefit whatsoever.
Looking at the study in Nature, it seems the age of the population is not taken into account. I doubt how you can make relevant comparisons then.