Freedom of Expression/Speech

What would it be like if we really lived in a democracy? These days just about everybody seems to be enjoying the benefits democratic government, that is if you believe government propaganda and you are one of the credulous many who are eager for a sense of well being at any price. But what is usually called democracy is in fact an oligarchy of elected representatives responsible to the business interests who bankrolled their campaign. If people were actually given the opportunity to choose democracy, they might do so, provided they understood what the word actually means.

In a BBC interview following the Charlie Hebdo Massacre, Jewish Chronicle writer David Aaronovitch advised those who do not approve of ‘freedom of speech’ to ‘move to Pakistan.’ It is not surprising to find a Zionist Jew advocating voluntary cleansing; after all, expulsion is a Jewish nationalist favourite adventure. Judging by Aaronovitch’s endorsement of elementary liberty, I am happy to announce that the appeal for freedom of expression is the immediate and very positive outcome of the disastrous events in Paris.

Press freedom has been under attack with the deaths in Paris of nine Charlie Hebdo employees, including editor Stephane Charbonnier, and the continued incarceration in Cairo of three Al Jazeera journalists. The circumstances of the victimization of the journalists are starkly different.

It is reported that a million people marched the streets of Paris today shouting “Liberté” and “Charlie”?1
Charlie who? Charlie Hebdo? Why would I want to align myself with cartoonists who show intolerance/prejudice to other cultures and religions?

Speaking outside Elysée Palace in the aftermath of this week’s terror killings in France, former President Nicolas Sarkozy condemned the violence as “an attack on civilization.” Coiffured, sun-tanned and nattily dressed, Sarkozy’s solemn words made him appear like the embodiment of civility.
That’s a quaint turn in etiquette by a politician who is mired in allegations of sleaze and corruption, as well as war crimes.

Two Muslim killers wiped out the whole editorial team of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo at noontime in Paris on Wednesday, January 7, 2015. This cold-blooded murder is an indefensible crime. The killers claimed that they have “avenged the Prophet Mohammad”. And Allah was considered “great”. Have they committed their heinous crime in the name or in defense of Islam? Charlie Hebdo has a long history of angering Muslims with cartoons, but it caricatured also all religions.

There are two ways to look at the alleged terrorist attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
One is that in the English speaking world, or much of it, the satire would have been regarded as “hate speech,” and the satirists arrested. But in France Muslims are excluded from the privileged category, took offense at the satire, and retaliated.

Noam Chomsky characterizes the Revolutionary War period as engendering the “vicious repression of dissident opinion.” The repressive measures to which Chomsky alludes have become portents of the myriad repressive policies and suppressions of dissidence that bleed out of Revolutionary times and spill well into the present. The late Howard Zinn corroborated Chomsky’s observation with stressing that, only “seven years after the First Amendment became part of the Constitution, Congress passed a law very clearly abridging the freedom of speech” in America—the Sedition Act of 1798.

In recent years, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has come under fire for disallowing scientists working for the Canadian government to speak directly to the press.

Sunday, November 30, Ferguson, Missouri. The governor of Missouri declared a state of emergency on November 17, and this is what’s been happening in Ferguson and St. Louis County, Missouri: