@Yuyutsu, Posted Tuesday, 20 January 2015 3:36:52 PM
Yuyutsu
Instead of indulging in puerile humour, can you confirm that the cartoons have been published in Australia?
What would be the point of publishing them and not making that fact public?

Unless we as a society repeal 18c, Australia should stop calling itself a "free society", because unless we have the right to speak or write about any social issue, we have become exactly like Soviet Russia or every Islamic country where the authorities suppress criticism of their regimes by shutting people up.

Human Rights commissioner Tim Wilson wrote in "The Australian" newspaper yesterday that since Andrew Bolt was successfully prosecuted for criticising the fact that people who were not really aboriginals at all were accessing the generous government benefits for 'aborigines", 130,000 more people are now claiming that they are "aboriginal."

And who is to say they are not? Denying the right of anybody to self identify as an aboriginal in order to claim special welfare benefits is now illegal under 18c.

The only reason there is a debate about "reforming" or repealing 18C is b/c Andrew Bolt got push-back for his personally-abusive attacks, using misinformation, on women who identify as Aboriginal. Those victims of Bolt's rhetoric could have sued, with many legal opinions they had a good case to do so.

Conflating 18C with the Charlie Hebdo attacks or Charlie Hebdo's satirical ethos, or both, is disingenuous. To say

"It is a strange defence of freedom of expression that simultaneously condemns the killing of people for drawing cartoons and, implicitly affirms that Australian law should nevertheless have a chilling effect on those who might produce similar words or images" is a mangled take on disparate events and views of them.

Talking about law having "a chilling effect" is weird.

Yuyutsu:

“speech is often hurtful to others, so restricting it is just.”

Free speech has to be an all or nothing value because speech of itself cannot hurt anyone. Unless you can prove that it is the speech that causes the pain then you cannot restrict it. Just because someone feels pain when something is said does not mean that the pain is a direct result.

Muslims feel pain when Islam is criticised or the Prophet is ridiculed because it triggers off insecurities and doubts they have about their religion. The cause of the pain is not what is said but the unexamined beliefs and behaviours that they adhere to. It is without doubt the case 100 per cent of the time that words cannot hurt unless you have insecurities about the subject. Insults about religion, cultural background, race, physical appearance – everything reflects on the hearer and their own attitudes to themselves.

If speech cannot hurt then there is no need to restrict it. Everyone should be free to say what they like. That is not to say that some people do not use speech with an aim to hurt. Although it is impossible to hurt with speech it is quite common for people to try and this, like any act whose aim is to hurt, is aggression. This may have been the aim of some of the published articles in Charlie Hebdo. If and how you deal with such aggression is another story. Certainly violence is never the answer.

People often feel powerless in the face of aggression and one way they respond is to call upon an authority like the government to protect them. No one needs protection from words but you can still take appropriate action against someone who has shown themselves to be aggressive. You can move away from such a person and refuse to relate to them until they change their behaviour. This is the most natural response. You could stop buying their magazine or create one which satirises their attitudes. We do not need legislation.

The latest Charlie Hebdo cartoon was published in either Sydney Morning Herald or the Daily Telegraph. It was approx 2cms x 3cms. I don't think the cartoon(s) used as the excuse for the murders in Paris were published anywhere in Australia.

Jay of Melbourne

If the religious authorities of the day put Galilleo in
prison because he could not prove his theory, then they should
have put all the religious believers in prison also, because they
couldn't prove their theories either. Still can't.

What if I am offended by the the fact that people preach religious
doctrines that they cannot prove and then want to change the
laws of a secular society that I believe in to their own sharia laws.

I am very offended that they come here and do that. Can I take them to court under 18c because I am offended by their actions.
No, it only works the other way doesn't it. I am not allowed to offend them by disclaiming their beliefs but they can offend me with their beliefs and attitudes.

It is not society that is intolerant of religion, it is religion
that is intolerant of the society around them, so much so that they want to break off into their own groups wearing different clothes
and seeking to persecute or kill anyone who doesn't conform to their beliefs. And 18c aids them in shutting up any descent
or other view. Every religion in history has been intolerant
of the societies around them. The Christians burnt people at the stake for not conforming to their beliefs.

The Amish in America
don't mix with the unholy people from the outside world and shut themselves away in their own groups as do all the other crazy sects
out there who think the society around them is wrong and not to be
tolerated.

Every religion thinks it is unique in it's beliefs but they all
follow the same patterns.