Blogging from the Highlands of Scotland
'From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step' - Diderot

Friday 23 January 2009

The UN and 'freedom of expression'

Do these folks have any clue what it means?

TV crew expelled from UN meeting on freedom of expression
- and the crew expelled were from the very 'high brow' Franco-German cultural channel ARTE, not some tabloid trashy sensationalist outfit. I've watched a few programmes on that channel in my time and have always found it to be impeccable in its standards, if a little self-consciously 'intellectual'.

Three member states (United States, Canada and Israel) have already stated they will not attend the forthcoming conference in Durban during April, for which the Geneva meeting was a prelude, whereas three EU member states (the UK, Denmark and the Netherlands) are only threatening to boycott the conference if the resolution proposed by various of the world's tyrannies is accepted. On the other hand I observe that Israel has prevented western news media from entering Gaza of late, so its presence among the 'boycotters' seems, frankly, somewhat hypocritical.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Welcome to my comment area. Whilst all comment is welcome you are requested to respect the views of others. To read full terms for use of this facility, please visit my 'Terms of Use' section, linked to under the 'About this Blog' heading at top right of the blog. Note added 12JUL2010 - All comments will now be pre-moderated before they appear in this blog; this is a measure to prevent 'spam' commenting, which has become frequent of late. Thank you.