I respectfully disagree. This is not about capitulation so much as it is about control. It's not a message to the Muslim world, it's a message to Swedes.
It's a classic Socialist response to a non-issue: Gov't types have been wanting reason to control and police the web for some time... the phony cartoon issue now primed as their excuse. Control of the media, especially the single most influential new medium is the goal of any fascist, by definition.
It fits in well with Kinsella's reasoning and with that of his poodle "Dawg". "We must censor ourselves! We mustn't offend peoples' core beliefs!" Yeah, right.
Go ask Leni Riefenstahl.
To censorship of the web in Sweden and proposed "self-regulation" of the press in the EU, add censorship of the student newspaper at a Canadian University. At the University of Prince Edward Island, the President of the University ordered copies of the student newspaper, "The Cadre," to be seized and removed from the stands after it printed the "Mohammed"cartoons.
[External Link]
The student union at UPEI appears to have been browbeaten into endorsing the decision to remove the papers. According to the president of the UPEI student union: ""In weighing the options of running the cartoons, something that should have been taken into consideration was the danger it posed for other people in the world"
Elsewhere in the media, support for freedom of expression seems tepid at best. CTV declares that "Some Atlantic Canadians are raising eyebrows with their use of controversial cartoons that depict the Prophet Muhammad."
[External Link]
Damian may urge his British readers to get out while they still can. Is there any place to go to, though, when academics accept intimidation as a legitimate reason to curb freedom of expression while the rest of us must live in mortal dread of the raised eyebrows of the politically correct?
Send me the money to 'get out' and point me to a decent country that'll actually have me and I'll quite happily leave this 'orrible place. Otherwise, I'm stuck here!
Posted at 2006-02-10 09:55:53 [PermaLink]Get out? Hell... REVOLT. The English have had the occasional revolution, with each to the good. Time, perhaps, for another? The American Revolution was founded in the main upon solid English principles.
Should they take root at home...
Socialist State silences dissent!
Big surprise.
Maybe the Swedes will start to wake up to that fact that their imagined utopia is built on deception.
"(Once again, I repeat my advice to my British readers: get out while you still can.)"
My parents were of that generation of EastEnders who upped and shifted to Essex upon matters in old London town having grown unbearable.
(two minor anecdotes - and I've more, believe me: i. a school-teacher friend, an employee of Newham council, was instructed not to entertain the children in her care with a book concerning the humurous adventures of a Shrove Tuesday pancake. You can guess why. ii. Working in a public library maintained by another East London council I was threatened by a bearded gentleman for having dared issue a book to his burqa-clad wife the day preceding. He took the matter to a manager, who explained that I should accept such attitudes with good grace. It was, after all, council policy to tolerate the religious sensibilities of ethnic minorities. I doubt the Koran is much concerned with the denial of printed material to women in one's care, but anyhoo...). My parents plan to relocate to the Kent coast. Why? Because the town to which they fled is rattling downhill at a rate that would bewilder all but those who endured the upheaval within the East End of the 60s and 70s.
I feel myself an heir to an exile, damned to wander further and further from the city of my birth as the years pass and this great country unravels. To where will *I* flee?
Ours is not a multicultural society. Social tranches, defined by race, class and religion, lead parallel lives. Young people within minority communities have embraced an absurd, violent creed, predicated upon a superstitious contempt for those who refuse to heed its tenets, for simply it affords an identity that such individuals cannot hope to enjoy in a Britain that encourages its minorities to perceive themselves as simultaneously foreign and British. W. Europe is reaping the whirlwind of a relativist approach to social policy founded in a soppy one-worldism and a reluctance to think ill of individuals and groups of Third World orgin.
Apologies if I've rambled. Events of the weeks past have left me bewildered. Rod Liddle, not afraid to confront uncomfortable truths, writes more persuasively on similar themes here:
[External Link]
People of North America, prepare yourselves for the new British invasion.
hammerdan:
No apologies needed even if you did ramble (in your words). Nice comment and thanks for the link.
You're certainly welcome here in Canada; you may have a little trouble with the language, however...;)
Posted at 2006-02-11 18:51:06 [PermaLink]I wasn't saying British people should leave the UK, but that Britain should leave the EU.
Posted at 2006-02-12 18:04:08 [PermaLink]