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a bunch of hypocrites and religious tight arses...
Community leaders have flatly rejected calls to revisit changes to the Racial Discrimination Act following the terrorist attacks in France.
“It’s a silly, knee-jerk reaction,” the former president of the Vietnamese Community in Australia Tien Nguyen said. “The terror attacks have no connection to antiracial laws.”
In August, the government backed down on potential changes to section 18C of the act, which covers “offending, insulting and humiliating” on the basis of race or ethnicity.
Liberal backbencher Cory Bernardi told Guardian Australia on Sunday Australians should not be “bullied or bludgeoned or terrorised” into keeping silent on matters that could cause offence in the wake of the Paris attacks, and called for a reopening of the debate on the Act.
- By Gus Leonisky at 12 Jan 2015 - 5:21pm
- Gus Leonisky's blog
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a bunch of hypocrites...
On Sunday, at least 1.5 million people marched through Paris in a dramatic display of solidarity after extremists killed 12 people at the offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and four at a kosher grocery last week. A police officer also was fatally shot.
It was a remarkable rally, and particularly striking was the number of world leaders present. More than 50 nations from all corners of the world were represented, "Charlie, Charlie, freedom of speech!” became the cry of the day.
Despite the laudable show of unity, many observers couldn't help but bristle at the hypocritical presence of some world leaders. Although they were publicly lending their support to free speech at the rally in France, at home they often stifled that very same free speech. As Marc Lynch, a professor at George Washington University, put it:
Reporters without Borders (RWB), a nonprofit that supports free speech, said it was "outraged by the presence of officials from countries that restrict freedom of information."
In particular, RWB took issue with the presence of Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Algerian Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra, United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Sheik Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan and Gabonese President Ali Bongo.
read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/01/11/the-free-speech-hypocrisy-of-some-world-leaders-marching-in-paris/?tid=hpModule_04941f10-8a79-11e2-98d9-3012c1cd8d1e&hpid=z11