The Politically Incorrect Show - 19/11/2001

The sound of laughter fills the streets of Afghanistan's cities for the first time in a long time. Music is being played, videos are being watched, women are showing their faces, citizens are openly saying good riddance to the odious regime whose personnel are running like the sordid bully-cowards they are.

Since our government won't tell us, we can't be sure whether New Zealand SAS troops have been part of the onslaught from which the Taliban are in such derisory retreat. It would be nice to think so. It would also be nice to think we could help bring free speech to Afghanistan with full moral conviction & consistency.

I quote from Saturday's Dominion:

"A tough libel law that could send journalists to prison for defaming political candidates was rejected by a select committee before Associate Justice Minister Margaret Wilson slipped it into legislation near the end of its passage through parliament. The provision suddenly appeared in the Electoral Amendment Bill No 2 without explanation from the Government. It was presented in a 39-page supplementary paper proposed by Ms Wilson on Wednesday & passed through Parliament on Thursday. The Cabinet added the amendment shortly after the cross-party justice & electoral committee had finished examining the bill. Ms Wilson & her staff would not talk yesterday about the last-minute amendment. Nor would a spokesman for Prime Minister Helen Clark."

The article goes on to explain the import of the amendment: that reporting, however inadvertently, an untrue statement about a political candidate during an election campaign will be punishable by a fine of up to $5000 or up to 3 months in jail. The Government no doubt hopes that the media will be sufficiently intimidated by it to refrain from publishing things that ARE true about the sleazy socialists it will be offering up at the next election.

This, remember, is the same Minister who wants to fine & imprison employers whose workers suffer "stress." Remember too that where authoritarianism goes, the whiff of corruption soon follows. This is the same Minister whose hand-picked appointee Susan Bathgate is under investigation for quintuple-dipping into taxpayer money. Ms Wilson bypassed normal procedures to appoint Ms Bathgate; she stretched normal procedures to slip this disgusting criminal libel law onto the statute books.

Ms Wilson should resign - & spend some time reminding herself what it was her government committed SAS troops to Afghanistan to uphold.

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