Cartoon Controversy Continues

Helen Clark was on Breakfast TV this morning and justified her stance by saying there is no question at all that media in NZ are free to publish the cartoons, hence there was no need to actually publish them.

To my mind this misses the point entirely (something not restricted to Labour MPs). The world-wide death threats and the like show that there is considerable doubt about whether one can safely publish such cartoons. By publishing in more media, it makes it safer for those who have already published.

And frankly I doubt that the subtleties of we have press freedom in principle, but prefer it is not exercised in practice quites gets the message to the anti free speech extremists that western secular countries will never give up their rights of free speech.

Xavier at Kete Were sums things up perfectly by concluding:

The whole situation is incredibly worrying because it has illustrated two disturbing trends. Firstly, the absolutely vile, violent and visceral reaction of islamists to any commentary that questions, satirises, mocks and…shock horror…offends their religion. Even more worrying is the handwringing of supposed liberals and the spineless concessions to a paradigm that is alien to all things liberalism holds dear: pluralism, tolerance and freedom.

If it wasn’t such a serious issue I would laugh at the legions of so called liberals rushing to allow religious sensitivity to outweigh free speech. Xavier also has am image of a Baby Jesus butt plug on his blog, which is a nice illustration of the hypocrisy on this issue.

Going back to our Helen, Whale Oil points out that she of course is very picky about religious sensitivity. She won’t say grace for the head of the Church of England and she will refer to the Exclusive Brethren by saying: