Unesco makes Qatar the main centre for World Press Freedom Day ... oh dear. I suppose the main venue for World Human Rights Day is going to be China. I'm sure the Chinese government would give every assistance to such a celebration and even provide speakers. Can't these people see what they are doing?
Genesis - re. lesbians ... can't you see the irony? This is the rubbish that appears when you DONT have a free press. In the UK we have the Daily Mail to peddle bigotry and hatred, and to foster ignorance and stupidity. Fox News does the same for the US.
Without a free press you are compeletely free to engage in persecution of minorities, as long as the government doesn't choose to protect them. But you aren't free to report serious issues. Hitler's Press was free to attack homosexuals but not to report on Gestapo torture chambers or concentration camps. And who says Nazi Germany didn't have a free Press? Well, just about everyone, I suppose.
Without knowing any of the details, I do wonder about this story. Why would lesbians dress up in thobes? Are they meant to be in pairs, one dressed as a man and one as a women? If so, why? Can't they have more public contact with each other if they are both dressed as women. How does the paper know that women dressed in thobes (if it is right about that) are lesbians? Cross-dressing doesn't make you lesbian/homosexual, there can be other reasons for it.
Curiousbutdetermined: Sure, there are plenty of wrongs that have been committed by British and American governments down the years and as they had global reach, unlike Qatar, the effects and scale of what they did were far greater than the impact of anything Qatar has done or is doing. However, your argument amounts to saying that nobody may ever express any criticism of another country, whatever it is doing, because no country is perfect.
In fact, by your own logic you should not have entered this discussion, because you know that Qatar is not perfect so you have no right to criticise any other country for its imperfections. We should all just shut up and only talk about the country where we were born (if we are allowed to talk about it).
If you listen to Brits and Americans, you will find that we do criticise our governments, all the time. In public. A little while ago, Jeremy Clarkson called our PM a one-eyed Scottish idiot on TV (and lots of us thought the reference to his origins and disability was tasteless ... he's just an idiot). But that's not what this thread is discussing.
[I find myself in complete agreement with Fubar's post above, except that Steve's conclusion was effectively "knuckle under or get out" which I disagree with, as it is actually saying the same as Curiousbut's argument that no foreigner should criticise the system].
PS: Kudos to Qatar Living and its members - I'll lay odds that this is a far, far better debate than anything that will take place during the Unesco Press Freedom Conference.
Unesco makes Qatar the main centre for World Press Freedom Day ... oh dear. I suppose the main venue for World Human Rights Day is going to be China. I'm sure the Chinese government would give every assistance to such a celebration and even provide speakers. Can't these people see what they are doing?
Genesis - re. lesbians ... can't you see the irony? This is the rubbish that appears when you DONT have a free press. In the UK we have the Daily Mail to peddle bigotry and hatred, and to foster ignorance and stupidity. Fox News does the same for the US.
Without a free press you are compeletely free to engage in persecution of minorities, as long as the government doesn't choose to protect them. But you aren't free to report serious issues. Hitler's Press was free to attack homosexuals but not to report on Gestapo torture chambers or concentration camps. And who says Nazi Germany didn't have a free Press? Well, just about everyone, I suppose.
Without knowing any of the details, I do wonder about this story. Why would lesbians dress up in thobes? Are they meant to be in pairs, one dressed as a man and one as a women? If so, why? Can't they have more public contact with each other if they are both dressed as women. How does the paper know that women dressed in thobes (if it is right about that) are lesbians? Cross-dressing doesn't make you lesbian/homosexual, there can be other reasons for it.
Curiousbutdetermined: Sure, there are plenty of wrongs that have been committed by British and American governments down the years and as they had global reach, unlike Qatar, the effects and scale of what they did were far greater than the impact of anything Qatar has done or is doing. However, your argument amounts to saying that nobody may ever express any criticism of another country, whatever it is doing, because no country is perfect.
In fact, by your own logic you should not have entered this discussion, because you know that Qatar is not perfect so you have no right to criticise any other country for its imperfections. We should all just shut up and only talk about the country where we were born (if we are allowed to talk about it).
If you listen to Brits and Americans, you will find that we do criticise our governments, all the time. In public. A little while ago, Jeremy Clarkson called our PM a one-eyed Scottish idiot on TV (and lots of us thought the reference to his origins and disability was tasteless ... he's just an idiot). But that's not what this thread is discussing.
[I find myself in complete agreement with Fubar's post above, except that Steve's conclusion was effectively "knuckle under or get out" which I disagree with, as it is actually saying the same as Curiousbut's argument that no foreigner should criticise the system].
PS: Kudos to Qatar Living and its members - I'll lay odds that this is a far, far better debate than anything that will take place during the Unesco Press Freedom Conference.