Merkel's talking nonsense on free speech
Public Eye will try to make some sense out of what German Chancellor Dr Angela Merkel said about free speech last week. But we can't guarantee you we'll succeed. That's because what she said is senseless.
Merkel said that Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard had every right to draw his 2006 cartoons showing the Prophet Mohammed as a terrorist. 'Whether they are necessary or helpful or tasteful or not doesn't matter,' the chancellor said. 'Is he allowed to do it? Yes, he is.' She even presented him with a free speech award. But Merkel condemned American pastor Terry Jones for wanting to burn the Koran. 'It is plainly disrespectful, even abhorrent. It's simply wrong.'
So let's try and make some sense out of this. Is Merkel saying it's bad taste to burn the Koran, but not so to depict the Prophet as a suicide bomber with hidden grenades in his turban? Or is she saying we don't have the freedom to mock Muslims by burning the Koran but we do to depict the founder of their religion as a terrorist? Maybe she's saying Muslims find Koran burning more offensive than having the Prophet satirised as a suicide bomber. Is that right, all you Muslims out there? Are you more OK with the Prophet pictured as a terrorist than your holy book being burned? Read what Merkel said again about Westergaard's cartoons, that it doesn't matter whether they were tasteful or not but that he had a right to draw them. If taste shouldn't rob a cartoonist of the right to insult Islam why should it rob a pastor of the right to do so? We told you she didn't make sense.
Buses spewing filth until 2019, thanks to greed
Please hold your breath until 2019 if you don't want to get sick. We're serious. You see all those buses clogging our city streets? Well, 2,600 of them - 40 per cent of our public bus fleet - are spewing out such filth you don't want to know. But you're breathing it in. So are your kids. The gunge is going through the nose, down the throat and into the lungs of that cute little baby of yours, the one that's just starting to crawl. That baby will be about 10 by the time those filthy buses are ordered off the roads. That's right, your government wants your baby to breathe in all the dirt until 2019. Our officials don't think your baby's health is a big enough deal for them to make the bus companies get rid of the polluting buses sooner. And the bus companies? Well, so what if your kid gets asthma? Maximising profits is more important than stopping a kid getting sick.