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June 25th, 2008 issue

Discrimination fight

Maybe this is stating the obvious, but President Václav Klaus isn’t much of a leader if he opposed the anti-discrimination bill “because its provisions already exist in current legislation and would add nothing new” (“Seniors need not apply,” Business, June 11–17).

Any intelligent person would realize that, even if this were true, the symbolic value of passing this bill would far outweigh the consequences of repetition. Now, the Czech Republic is the last of the EU countries without a law against discrimination. What kind of symbolic value does that have?

Daniel Padolsky

Prague

Health care

You say 46.6 million Americans cannot access health care (“Healthcare price tag,” Opinion, June 18–24). That is simply not true. They may be uninsured, but that does not mean they cannot access the system.

Many, many of these people are uninsured because they have made that choice and not because they cannot afford it. Nevertheless not having insurance does not mean no access — it just means someone other than the insurance company is going to pay the provider.

Martin Smith
Fort Lauderdale, Florida

More on Muslims

Yes, most Muslims are peaceful and good people, just as most secularly minded or Christian people are. That is not debatable in our modern age (“Locals react to anti-Muslim sketch,” News, June 11–17).

The issue is whether or not pictures of Mohammed, in any form, should be displayed. Personally, I do not care if Jesus, Mohammed, SpongeBob SquarePants or Mother Theresa has a bomb on his or her head.

This is freedom of speech. The people posting cartoons all over Prague apparently understand this concept. But the very fact that the Czech police were hunting them for months proves that Europeans are being denied such freedom.

If I post one of these cartoons on the roof of my house here in America, no police officers could force me to take it down. If they did, I would sue them for so much money that I would own all of Las Vegas. This is because free nations are based on the principle of unbridled expression.

Granted, the police might be hunting the poster hangers because of the vandalism aspect. In this case, please do arrest them. Their message of free speech should be respected, however. No legal action should come about on that accord.

I personally do not agree with the posters’ message, but they have every right to express it in private places wishing to let them or in public forums. Any push by the Czech government to abridge that right would be a flashback to worse times.

Bryan Moody
Las Vegas

Reader's comments:

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[17:40 26/06/2008] : "This is because free nations are based on the principle of unbridled expression."

Perhaps you should have said "free nations would be...". If you think that you have freedom of expression in your country you are *extremely* naive.

John Ainsworth
Prague

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