Money talks

A lot of people are getting hot under the collar over France defending (robustly) it's citizen's right to freedom of speech. It's ironic that in a situation where a dogma-soaked lunatic murders a junior school teacher for blasphemy against Islam, that these countries feel the problem here are the cartoons! It's even more ironic that there are plenty of "real" injustices and atrocities happening to Muslims all over the world but these apparently don't even register on the radar of places like Turkey, Bangladesh and Pakistan! I suppose it speaks to their sincerity on such issues as well as the fragility of the regimes in those places. They seem to be intent on picking the lowest hanging fruit in terms of things to take "offence" at, and it seems totally transparent to the rest of us that this is completely intended to distract their largely impoverished and indoctrinated populations from the fact that their freedoms, prospects and opportunities are comparatively crap compared to ours.

I'm fully behind what France is doing, it's a fundamental principal of their culture that people have the right to freedom of expression and conscience. I fear that our own Government, although supposedly supportive of the same fundamental rights, would never be so robust. Theocratic bullies and the money men that sit in power behind them have always existed, and still exist in many states. They are bullies like any other and employ the same tactics, but, as we all learn in the school playground bullies can be defeated by standing up to them. So, project the cartoons onto buildings and print them in every newspaper! To those people who argue that they deserve "respect" for their religious beliefs then I say that first they need to show a bit of "respect" themselves, condoning the beheading of innocent people over stupid fucking cartoons definitely isn't the way to do that!