Suse,

Over-egging the the pudding is no sustitute for sound argument and truth.

Wrong ttbn, if anything, I held back on the eggs....

Suse,

I suppose we could do tit for tat until we both died of boredom. I would just like to say that your rejoinder proves my thought that you are a hypocrite in telling me and others that we "can't be told anything". You need to get hold of a mirror and have a good look at yourself, old girl.

So called "Political Correctness" can certainly be a problem. I recall some years ago when I think one of the senior Islamic clerics at that time compared bikini clad girls to "uncovered meat."

Of course, the individual concerned was was soon enough engulfed by howels of derision etc but unfortunately, some of the real salient points were lost as a consequence.

And what do I mean by that. Well, I would refer people back to my comments visa vi my experiences living amongst conservative Muslims in Jawa, and re-iterate that relative to the society within which we live, there is much about them that hearkens back to much earlier times in our own existence.

And this needs to be understood I believe.

So, whilst it is all very well for the girls (and the boys for that matter) to be strutting their stuff down at the local beaches here, it is most certainly a very dangerous thing to do in other places.

Whilst this kind of practice is acceptable to most of us here

(though Runner may care to comment further and we notice that Popey today has asked that women who have abortions to be pardoned - *Runner!?* )

it is most certainly not acceptable in other parts. And of course DFAT quite rightly warns about this in its "Smart Traveller" publications.

So when you have drunken Ozzies in places like Bali behaving in a manner which is deeply offensive to some of the locals (and even to some people here) then you ought not be so surprised when you get attacked.

Now, don't get me wrong, I like to party it up and drink in the street etc etc just as much as the yobbos however, one must be extremely careful when and where you do this.

So, whilst the particular Islamic Cleric in question needs to be reminded of our values, we are only foolish if we do not learn from him how it is that other countries and societies view this.

DreamOn:

I think the Islamic Cleric should be reminded that these are not only our values but they are human values. Freedom to enjoy the beauty of the opposite sex is as fundamental as freedom to enjoy music or art or food and these freedoms should be upheld for everyone on the planet.

The fact that some other countries and some citizens of this country want to suppress that freedom is something we should vigorously fight against. If we have to compromise our freedoms in order to visit other countries then perhaps we should re-consider visiting those countries who want to suppress those freedoms. They would then have to make a choice between their suppressions and having visitors. This is how we play our part in creating a world that works towards freedoms rather than repressions.

If individuals or communities in Australia try and impose such repressive values on the rest of the country we should hold them to account and get them to explain why they feel the need to do so. Being ‘deeply offended’ by what nature has created smacks of another agenda altogether where they are trying to protect their emotional dependence on religion.

As always with sex trafficking hysteria, it's illuminating to ask the question "if there really are this many sex slaves, how many johns must there be?"

You wind up with absurd and patently false figures.