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Another Nail in The Coffin for Free Speech in EU

posted by martyb on Tuesday November 13 2018, @12:50PM   
from the Room-101-dept dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

As the days go by our hard won freedoms and liberty are slowly being eroded. In Europe a crushing blow has been made to freedom of speech with a European Court of Human Rights upholding a conviction for saying that the person known as Muhammad ten centuries ago was technically a paedophile based on information in historical texts. The statement was made in reference to Muhammad's marriage to a six year old child name called Aisha. The court found that “Presenting objects of religious worship in a provocative way capable of hurting the feelings of the followers of that religion could be conceived as a malicious violation of the spirit of tolerance, which was one of the bases of a democratic society.”. In giving its ruling that "Muhammad was not a worthy subject of worship" the court has additionally demonstrated a complete misunderstanding as to the religion involved which worships "Allah", a word meaning 'God', not 'Muhammad' who claimed to be a prophet of this god. Freedom of speech is dying.

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Original Submission

• Re:nonsense(Score: 3, Informative) by deimtee on Wednesday November 14 2018, @12:01PM

  by deimtee (3272) on Wednesday November 14 2018, @12:01PM (#761699) Journal

  Depends on what you call authoritarian I guess. Authoritarianism isn't necessarily bad.
  The system I am familiar with is Australia's.

  *SPOILER* (click to show) *SPOILER* (click to hide)

  We have public funded (through tax) healthcare that covers everything except cosmetic surgery and non-emergency dental.
  There is a schedule of fees for services that they will rebate, and the patient pays the difference if the doctor charges more. Emergency room treatment is usually free.
  Many GP's and clinics 'bulk-bill', which means they avoid a fair bit of paperwork and payment problems by charging the exact fee from the schedule, and submitting it to the gov in bulk. The patient pays nothing and assigns the rebate to the doctor or clinic.

  There is also private healthcare for those that want it, and in fact the government strongly encourages it to reduce the demands on the public system. It usually covers extras like dental, cosmetic surgery, having a private room instead of being on a ward, and usually shorter waiting lists for elective surgery.

  It is acknowledged by both systems that where there is a difference in quality of treatment, it is the public system that is superior. Many private patients who need serious surgery get it done in the public system, and then transfer to the private system for a nicer recuperation.

  The government controls who can practice medicine, how much it costs the patient, the price of drugs, who can buy/sell those drugs. There is actually a constant pressure between the medical groups and the government bureaucrats over these things which helps avoid the worst aspects of authoritarianism.

  In Europe (the countries I know), government controls the fact that everybody is health insured. The terms of the contracts are negotiated between insurance companies and the medical profession.

  If the situation is as you describe, the government is not providing healthcare, they are merely enforcing the purchase of insurance and participation in a private system.

  --
  One job constant is that good employers have low turnover, so opportunities to join good employers are relatively rare.

  Parent

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