Final Word from Friday, November 19, 2010
Open Thilo Sarrazin's book "Germany Abolishes Itself," and on numerous pages you'll find passages that could land him in prison if he ever visited the CR. Take Page 150, for example, where he claims that Arabs in Germany have the broad tendency to procreate in order to qualify for more social transfers and adds that shut-in Arab women often have nothing better to do than to make welfare babies. A capricious Czech court could easily declare this to be hate language and toss Sarrazin in the slammer, just as a court did yesterday to six radical Czechs for making similar comments about immigrants. Or as a court did to Miroslav Sládek in 1998 for anti-German remarks (so that Václav Havel could get reelected). Czech courts are stuck in a totalitarian mind-set when it comes to freedom of speech. How long before criticizing a grand coalition comes to be seen as "inciting hatred against a group of people"?[Czech Republic Deutschland schafft sich ab Dělnická strana]
Glossary of difficult words
Amazon - if you click on the book cover, you can flip to Page 150 and read it for yourself (in German);
to procreate - (of people or animals) to produce young, to reproduce;
shut-in - confined (to the home, for example);
capricious - given to sudden and unaccountable changes of mood or behavior;
the slammer - (informal) prison;
Miroslav Sládek - his absence in Parliament allowed Havel to win just enough votes;
mind-set - the established set of attitudes held by someone.