It's a couple of days after the Westminster demonstration against Parliament's attempt to pass the religious hatred bill, and its defeat by one vote (Tony Blair didn't cast his single vote for his own bill, and it cost him dear).
This legislation could easily criminalise people who cause offence (like Salman Rushdie), and does go against centuries of progress toward societies where free speech is guaranteed.
Here's some comment by Polly Toynbee in the Guardian.
On a similar theme, here's the Wikipedia entry on the Danish Muhammad cartoons, now causing a firestorm in the Muslim world. Are these fair comment in a free-speech society, or equivalent to anti-Semitism in 1930s Europe?
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2 comments:
Wow, I loved the Wikipedia entry link -- gave me all the info I needed, having had my head buried in the spa recently..... Cheers Peter. p.s. sorry about Thierry, Sol and the whole sorry state of things. E x
Free speech is all well and good, but just like plastering swastikas and KKKs all over oneselves or ones paper is not just thoughtless and in bad taste, I would argue that these Danes (and Norwegians, Germans, Frenchmen and Italians) probably came off the short bus.
...and having the papers, and the government, apologize proved extraordinarily effective. Talk about grassroots movements, the christian right have nothing on them, that is for sure.
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