Laurie Forde
Mon, 10 Dec 2001 19:18:16 -0800
It's interesting the way these rightwingwers like Tim Blair are always suggesting that critics of the "mainstream" , billionaire imposed consciousness, should leave the Country----you know, the old 'Go and live in Russia if you're not happy here" line.
What Blair and others who consider they have some sort of right to decide what is allowable before you have to leave the Country fail to understand is that those who seek change are doing just that---seeking change----not looking for the next stagecoach out of town----that was the answer to critics in the good ole US of A---and although Howard has declared himself a Deppity Sheriff for the good ole US, dissenters are not being run out of Australia yet---- are they? Laurie. ---------------------- ----- Original Message ----- From: "Trudy Bray" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "news-clip" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, December 11, 2001 1:11 PM Subject: The Australian: Tim Blair: May I speak freely here? The Australian Tim Blair: May I speak freely here? By Tim Blair 11dec01 TALK about your James Fixx moments. Fixx, you'll remember, was the author of 1977's best-selling The Complete Book of Running - in the 1970s, people needed books to tell them how to run - who died during a gentle jog in Vermont in 1984. Phillip Adams got Fixxed last week. The Weekend Australian's virtuous, non-racist, unbigoted columnist was hit with a racial vilification complaint. Eight months earlier, Adams had accused John Howard of the same offence, writing a mock apology from the PM: "I'm sorry for running a line against political correctness, knowing it would give bigots a licence for racial vilification and worse." Turns out Howard gave that licence to Adams, at least according to an American citizen who took offence at Adams's October 6-7 response to the September 11 terrorist attacks and complained to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity police. "The US has to learn that its worst enemy is the US," Adams had written, accusing the US of madness, brutalities, self-destructiveness, violence and Christian fascism. The Sydney Morning Herald's Pilita Clark was astounded that Adams, of all people, could be subject to claims of racism. "It sounds too strange to be true," she wrote, before indulging in some bigotry of her own: "Adams is such a vigorous opponent of racism, discrimination and all manner of oppression that the Prime Minister once famously urged the ABC to find a 'right-wing Phillip Adams' to balance its political output." Sure, Pilita. A right-winger is, by definition, racist and discriminatory. We just can't help ourselves. Warren Beeby, the group editorial manager of News Limited, publisher of The Australian, said he'd "never heard of an American being racially vilified before. I think this is one of the great tragedies of our time." The Weekend Australian's editorial on Saturday declared that: "The people of the world's strongest democracy do not need a semi-legal, semi-government body in Australia to defend them against a piece of opinion published in an Australian newspaper." Few questioned the racial vilification law (a law that Adams, to his considerable credit, has always opposed); most were simply upset and confused by the notion of an offended American. The problem here is that you can't really omit specific nationalities from a racial vilification law on account of that being, er, racist. Besides, what if Adams were to get his medication mixed up one morning and start abusing black Americans or Korean Americans or homeless poor Americans? The "world's strongest democracy" argument is a little shaky when it's applied to some hobo living in a box behind the 7-11. "No one is being racially abused in Victoria today because they are white and Christian," according to Danny Ben-Moshe, Melbourne-based executive director of the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation Commission. Well, they are, but they usually choose not to take the matter to the politeness cops. That's another problem with vilification laws; as Matthew Parris wrote in a recent edition of The Spectator, on England's new law against incitement of religious hatred: "It places in the hands of those who might be potentially angered the power, by choosing to become angry, to render someone else's words prosecutable." Yet another problem: Adams, or I, or anyone, can probably avoid vilification prosecution in Australia by publishing our loathsome hate-speech on the internet via a US-based server - although this may depend on whether your judge supports the finding in Macquarie Bank v Berg or if he's a Gutnick v Dow Jones man. Either way, the net makes prosecution even more complicated. And a law that is essen tially unenforceable is no law at all. Speaking of no laws, Adams could always move to the free-speaking US. As Utah's Ernest Wolfe pointed out in a delicious letter to The Sydney Morning Herald: "The next time he bitches the US out, even if she deserves it, he ought to consider the fact that, here at least, he would be left alone. Sorry, Phil. Them's the breaks, I guess." A better solution would be to move the US, or at least that part of it which protects free speech, here. As the British - fine people, by the way, and excellent cricketers - will shortly discover, the good intentions behind racial vilification and religious incitement laws invariably end up curbing opinion, not hatred. Home Secretary David Blunkett says Britain's new law is not intended to restrict "jokes and amusing behaviour", which all but guarantees Ali G's imprisonment by year's end. We can set an example for the British - wonderful cooks, great teeth - by scrapping our vilification laws immediately. I never thought I'd say this, but silencing Adams would be a crime. Tim Blair is a former writer for Time and The Daily Telegraph © 2001 The Australian ************************************************************************* This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without permission from the copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws and it may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use." --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- RecOzNet2 has a page @ http://www.green.net.au/recoznet2 and is archived at http://www.mail-archive.com/recoznet2%40paradigm4.com.au/ until 11 March, 2001 and Recoznettwo is archived at http://www.mail-archive.com/recoznettwo%40green.net.au/ from that date. This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without permission from the copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws and it may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use."