Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has described himself as the most persecuted person “in the entire history of the world”.

Mr Berlusconi also said he was “the best prime minister we can find today”.

In an impassioned statement, he then mistakenly told reporters he had spent millions of euros on “judges”, before correcting himself to say “lawyers”.

Damien posted this, and I think you’ll agree that it bears reposting. It reminded me of this guy’s election poster:

For what it’s worth, I don’t think that there should be a law against blasphemy, and I believe that the existence of any such law would dull public discourse and free expression. The very possibility of prosecution would cause editors to hold back from publishing any material that some nutjob religious fundy could claim to take offence to, and so I don’t see how this law could be anything but extremely harmful. Let’s just tweak the constitution with a referendum the next time an election swings round.

Update: There’s a more learned take on the matter over at The Jackanory, and as usual Twenty Major’s perspective is well worth reading (“This is possibly the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. It’s like saying you can be fined for libelling Santa Claus or the fucking Tooth Fairy…”).

The point I’m trying to make here is that something drastic ought to be done about conservation efforts in general and global warming in particular, but the requisite improvement in these areas will never arrive in democratic societies until people are convinced to vote away their cars in order to save penguins, and this is unlikely to happen anytime soon.

This is one of their better ones in recent times.

An eight-year-old boy has sparked an unlikely outcry in Sweden after failing to invite two of his classmates to his birthday party.

The boy’s school says he has violated the children’s rights and has complained to the Swedish Parliament.

The school, in Lund, southern Sweden, argues that if invitations are handed out on school premises then it must ensure there is no discrimination.

This guy is awesome, and the work he does sounds awesome too. Instead of wasting money on fueling over-population in poor countries, the Irish government should give way more money to conservation projects like this guy’s. Last time I checked we had more than enough people on this planet…

His book on Amazon.

Related to this notion is an idea I had a while ago, which could be sloganeered along the lines of “Airmiles for Vasectomies”, which would grant extra ‘pollution rights’ to those who forswear having children. Thus, someone would be allowed to use more petrol, fly in planes more often and so on, if he or she never had a child, since his or her carbon footprint would end when they died, and wouldn’t carry on through the next generation. Or is that idea too “Green Fascist” as well?

If there is a formal dinner, scout out the seating arrangements first. If you have been put next to someone boring, quietly switch your name card to somewhere more interesting. If you get caught, claim to be looking for the loo, or the exit.

Finally, try a bit of mischief to liven things up. If you meet a Chinese diplomat, pretend to be under the impression that he comes from Taiwan. Praise effusively the “Republic of China” for its stalwart stance in the cause of freedom. The more they splutter, the more you can pretend not to understand.

There’s a few things to be said about this. Firstly, the tone of “Fitna” is reportedly so over the top and hysterical that no sensible person would be swayed by whatever arguments it tries to make. Therefore, having it out in the public domain isn’t doing anyone any harm. You shouldn’t ban things just because some people, or even most people, don’t like them. As John Stuart Mill explained in On Liberty, it’s better to have incorrect views aired publicly, where they can be evaluated and rejected by society at large, rather than try to stifle their expression, and in the process create a kind of cult following around them.

Of course the problem here is not that “Fitna” was banned by a government, which would be an outrage, but that it was pulled by a website because of security concerns. Thus, yet again, intimidation has carried the day, as it did back 2005/2006 when newspaper editors across Europe caved into fear and refused to publish offensive-yet-newsworthy cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad. It is of course understandable that LiveLeak would remove the video after its staff receiving death threats and so on, but their decision is still disappointing.

However, the real villains of this piece are obviously not the LiveLeak management but the people behind the campaign of intimidation itself. Although their thuggery is remarkable, the most outstanding feature of these clowns is their stupidity. Through their crazed threats of violence they’ve managed to spin the news cycle 180º and have turned a minor news item about a scaremongering Dutch film into another major free speech issue in which the entire media establishment will be arrayed against them and not Geert Wilders. In fact, Wilders and his juvenile film are now likely morph from a minor and derided curiosity into a cause célèbre for the media, in which almost all of the political right and a good deal of the left will end up backing Wilders by default.

By strangling the release of “Fitna”, these enemies of free expression are only going to encourage more people to believe that maybe Geert Wilders has a point when he claims that Islam and Liberalism are incompatible. They’re making Wilders’ argument better than he could ever have, had he been allowed to speak.