OFF: Freeedom of Speech

[Jonathan Jarrett]

On Mon, Feb 13, 2006 at 03:06:02PM +0000, Carl Edlund Anderson typed out:
> My point was only that I don't understand what _debate_ there could
> possibly be on this issue because, under current laws, it looks entirely
> black-and-white, open-and-shut.  Things are illegal or not illegal;
> there may often be uncertainty on whether certain things are legal, but
> these things were pretty clearly legal.

        This alerts me to the fact that at some point I lost the thread. I
thought that the reason Mike was going on about foreigners coercing us
into the loss of our freedoms referred to the recent narrow defeat (in
the UK) of the Religious Hatred Bill, which would have made something like
these cartoons, even the `clean' ones, illegal (here). This is why I was
attempting to argue that the real threat to such freedoms as he was
defending came not from outraged imams but from that bunch we call a
government, as that bill's been on the table for a long long time before
this whole cartoons mess blew up, and in fact I wonder if the newspaper
furore over that didn't help to keep the House of Commons empty and stopo
Labour putting in the whip to make sure it went through... Would be
odd if that's what saved us this time, eh? Yours,
                                                  Jon


ObCD: Fu Manchu - _Eatin' Dust_
--
        Jonathan Jarrett                Birkbeck College, London
                 jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk
        --------------------------------------------------------
  "The large print giveth and the small print taketh away." (Tom Waits)