Celtic Streissand Effect

Somebody probably still remembers Novaya Gazeta, and Anna Politkovskaya. The latter was murdered about a century ago, and the paper itself has met some hard times in Russia. Politkovskaya wrote many articles in Novaya Gazeta about some probable mischiefs from Russian government's side in Chechen War. Murderers were never caught, but she got a lot of attention for her articles. Russia still doesn't really excel on the transparency level.

Then there was this website based solely on donations, and they torrented US diplomatic cables around the web. Julian Assange is wanted in the USA for spying (or maybe not), and in the Sweden for a (alleged) rape. Wikileaks produced papers that showed that everything is not so black and white in war, and probably never will. USA government was not very happy with this issue, but seems that Julian Assange is too liked person for drone attacks.

Then there is Edward Snowden. Also a hero of free speech, but unfortunately plenty of times confused with Julian Assange as seen on John Oliver show. Snowden is still alive, and the leaks are still out there.

In Ireland, you would not except that kind of silencing would go through unless it's blasphemy which is still a crime in Ireland, except it just completely did. It seems that the local court has just decided that local media should not give out any information about Denis O'Brien's involvement in local corruption (alleged, or not). When a member of the parliament Catherine Murphy brought this (alleged) suspicion up in the Dáil (Irish Parliament), no local newspaper dared to published her speech, although it should be normal journalistic process just to quote somebody.

Irish High Court decided that his past should not be reported in newspapers at all. It started when RTE was about to bring out some old stuff from his past, and his lawyers just run in there, and for some odd reason actually won the hearing. Except for broadsheet.ie which still loans MP Murphy's speech from the Dail. 

Hopefully Mr. Denis O'Brien and his lawyer's will hear about the Streisand Effect. It usually ends up when trying to shut up people in the internets that the voice actually gets louder.

Related stories:

Channel Four blog (including passages from MP Murphy's speech)

RTE fights back next month

New York Times covering the Clash

Even BBC is covering it (Loyalists will love this)

Bad news for comedians: You can still get convicted for blasphemy in Ireland

Freedom house's last year's report gives good scores to Ireland for almost all the concerned fields (legal, economical, political, press freedom) except matters concerning freedom of speech.

It seems that Ireland is at the same time highly secular and highly religious. Blasphemy is regarded as a criminal offence in Ireland, although it's unclear to me, how the grounds of blasphemy are judged. Wikipedia's article "Blasphemy law in Republic of Ireland" gives some insight. The article states that somebody got fined thousand pounds and got convicted to jail for a year for denying Divinity of Christ. This was about 300 years ago, but the law is still in effect and a few years ago Defamation act was reformed. Reformed Act, according to Wikipedia, states that uttering "material 'grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion', when the intent and result is 'outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion'."

I'm not indenting to test the limits of the law, but I would be curious to know how to get accused of blasphemy. In Finland there was (and still is in some form of) an Act which included blasphemy. Two Finnish artists got convicted and later pardoned by the President.

First case was when an author called Hannu Salama published a book called Juhannushäät (Midsummer dances) 1964. It included a scene called Pilkkasaarna (mockery of a christian sermon). It didn't help his case that he was known for his affiliation with working-class. He got a three months of parole in 1966, but got pardoned in 1968.
Second case happened in 1969 when a painter Harro Koskinen got convicted for a painting called The Pig Messiah, which featured a crucified pig.

Perhaps these two Finnish artists gives some ideas to people in Ireland how to provoke on the limits of legal boundaries.