Freeedom of Speech

[M Holmes]

Hawkfan writes:

> Erk, Outlook filed your posting in Junk Mail. I do hope that's not MS'
> contribution to the current censorship debate ;-)

Heh. I et they don't get to see it in China either.

> Lets not forget that: 1.  99% of all groups are reasonable people but
> the other 1% make 99% of the noise 2.  People have a tendency to get
> more hard line the more you criticise them

I'm fine with criticism. I'm not fine with people from other countries
telling us that we can't publish something. If they're happy without
freedom of speech then that's their lookout. They don't get to remove it
from us because their laws and religion don't apply to us (at least
those of us who aren't Muslim). That applies to both eating bacon
sarnies and publishing anything we like.

> When idiots start showing posters with "Death to xxx" on them (it's
> not so long ago that the National Front would have replaced the xxx
> with "Pakis")

I'm in favour of freedom of speech.  That means that I'll shut up if the
BNP march or if people dress as suicide bombers when that's how they
want to do it.  Making death threats however crosses the line under
incitement laws. We sold the pass when this happened with Salman
Rushdie. It's time to retake it to make that particular point. I
wouldn't have chosen something as dumb as cartoons to fight on, but
someone else picked that fight.

> that's not a good reason for fanning the flames.

It's also not a good reason to surrender rights once again. Last time it
was a book. This time it's a cartoon. Bacon sarnies next? Just how
trivial can people get trying to apply their rules to us?

> Rather we should be dampening them.  I don't think that the furore is
> just due to the cartoons as I suspect the cartoons were a last straw.

In fact it took a bunch of Danish Imams four months of hawking this
protest around the middle east to get it to ignition heat.  When they
began to realise that the original 12 drawings (commissioned to
illustrate self-censorship, not to pick a fight - the guy was originally
writing a kid's book about the life of Mohammed and couldn't find an
illustrator) weren't bothering much of anyone.  To ramp it up, the Imams
drew (or had drawn) a picture of the Prophet with a pig's snout and
trotters (I'm guessing that this is just about as insulting as it's
possible to get) and went on TV in Jordan (and a BBC international
station) claiming that it was one of the Danish drawings.  They drew
three fake drawings in all and have been exposed for this in Denmark -
a big part of the reason the Danes are rather annoyed.

> Free speech is an important principle, but it can be and has been
> abused.

That's the spin, but I don't buy it. Besides, it's not folks praising
motherhood that are going to need defending, it's the folks who other
folks get upset about.

I'm heartened though that moderate Muslims in Britain are calling for
arrests for incitement. I've been hoping for that since the Salman
Rushdie affair over a decade ago. If they'd also help make the point that
free speech is what's important in europe, I'd most happily join them on a
march.

FoFP