Photos from March for Free Expression, Sat March 25

Surely all dissent is good? You have the freedom to insult them so why shouldn't they have the freedom to insult who they choose? We've lost too many freedoms lately without any more being eroded.

It is my understanding that freedom of expression also has respect as its friend. Seems to me that respect is the one that grants expression its freedom. In other words if you're not being reasonable or even destructive then keep looking over your shoulder.

Yes say what you want to express your good selves but remember too that playing with other people's emotions can get you a bloody nose. Or be regarded as provocative.

I know how I choose to live, as I get older there are even more learners in this world and once must learn tolerance and understanding too,

Seems to me this type of respect also has one ally and that is that, "the most well liked people in the world always give complements or constructive feedback whatever that means to you.

Results 1 - 10 of about 57,700 for tatchell zimbabwe.
Results 1 - 10 of about 50,400 for tatchell iraq.
Results 1 - 10 of about 33,400 for tatchell iran.
Results 1 - 10 of about 10,300 for tatchell "saudi arabia".
Results 1 - 10 of about 363 for tatchell mauritania.


Under the table Tatchell's feet made convulsive movements. He had not stirred from his seat, but in his mind he was running, swiftly running, he was with the crowds outside, cheering himself deaf. He looked up again at the portrait of Big Brother. The colossus that bestrode the world! The rock against which the hordes of Asia dashed themselves in vain! He thought how ten minutes ago -- yes, only ten minutes -- there had still been equivocation in his heart as he wondered whether the news from the front would be of victory or defeat. Ah, it was more than a Eurasian army that had perished! Much had changed in him since that first day in the Ministry of Love, but the final, indispensable, healing change had never happened, until this moment.

The voice from the telescreen was still pouring forth its tale of prisoners and booty and slaughter, but the shouting outside had died down a little. The waiters were turning back to their work. One of them approached with the gin bottle. Tatchell, sitting in a blissful dream, paid no attention as his glass was filled up. He was not running or cheering any longer. He was back in the Ministry of Love, with everything forgiven, his soul white as snow. He was in the public dock, confessing everything, implicating everybody. He was walking down the white-tiled corridor, with the feeling of walking in sunlight, and an armed guard at his back. The longhoped-for bullet was entering his brain.

He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.

The danish neocon movement from prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen to the so-called Dansk Folkeparti and Jyllandsposten‚ (major Danish right-wing newspaper) have all over the planet turned us into a nation without any kind of culture.

The fierce global, popular protests are not only against a couple of drawings and not at all against our freedom of speech. They originate in anger and despair accumulated over decades over the growing persecution of Muslims in many countries, with Denmark unfortunately notourious as a front runner; and over a genocide on Arab peoples killing close to two million men, women and especially children since 1991; and an "Ausradierung" of several sovereign nations. The Danish government and a considerable section of the parliament are actively responsible.

Jyllandsposten, Dansk Folkeparti and Anders Fogh Rasmussen have directed this huge anger towards Denmark.

Some Arab regimes and groups closely linked to the US government (e. g. Lebanon, Saudi Arabia), have out of their own reasons put gasoline on the fire - and thereby distracted the protest from the more dangerous USA and Israel.

Art, Lies and Reality

Why does a children's book really have to be blasphemic, kicking the holiest in a religion?

A drawing is smear campaigning, when it is ascribing to a whole people negative features, that aren't true or typical. The "Muslim" with the scimitar definitely does not look like the one, who in our Souith Harbor neighborhood of Copenhagen is selling milk and toilet tissue to tired people with bags under their eyes at 1 am.

Behind the man with the scimitar, two covered women in the despised Burkas have eyes filled with fear. But many of the Arab nations actually didn't have neither Burkas or stonings, but progressive, democratic governments - until the intelligence services of the US, UK and Israel had them brought down and killed. Prime minister Fogh's Allies in London and Washington instead organized and trained regimes like the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, and Osama Bin Laden.

Even in Saddam Husseins Iraq, with his persecution of communists and other opposition, women had no need to cover themselves up, and 50% of the students in Iraqi univercities, that did not stand back for the western world, were women.

The Frankenstein Iraq, Anders Fogh and his friends can't make stick, is now threatening to bring back opression of women and stonings.

Not the Arab peoples but the Western superpowers are working to keep the Arabic world stuck in Medieval leftovers.

Who are the agressors?

It is our government that has heavily armed troops in Iraq - not the other way around.

It is our government tha authors inhumane immigrant laws, that already before Jyllandsposten's caricatures have made Denmark despised all around the world.

It is our government, that has cooperated with the CIA about torture flights through Denmark.

It is our allies, that builds concentration camps where people of Arab nationality are being tortured and are rottening without a trial.

It is our allies that have turned Iraq, our culture's cradle, into a gigantic nuclear waste junkyard, where more than 50% of the new cancer cases are children under 5 years old.

These incredibly ignorant people of power simply don't understand, that what they do to other people at the end of the day they're doing to themselves.




Holocaust

We might not think anyone is noticing this little nation, Denmark, out there in the world. But people around us are following what is happening in Denmark more closely than many Danes themselves. They've heard about Dansk Folkeparti's Louise Frevert's remark that "Muslims are a cancer on the Danish society...." They also know very well that "Reverend" Jesper Langballe in the Danish parliament called Islam a "plague over Europe"..... excactly what Hitler's Der Sturmer called the Jews before the Chrystal Night and its murderous raids on Jews November 9th 1938.

People of Islamic faith are no more dumb than everyone else. They know that all signs of a coming Holocaust against Muslims are present. In Denmark, around Europe, in Washington and London. In the Middle East it started a long time ago.

Mr. Cartoonist, can you imagine the pain? To stand on top of the ruins of your home, in the ruins of your town? A dirty teddy bear, that reminds you of your little girl, your whole family,that's no longer there? No water, no sewer, no work, and only a couple of hours of electricity every day? A „rebuilding of Iraq", that now has ended up in Mr. Bush saying that " the Iraqis will have to take care of this themselves..."- after Dick Cheney's Halliburton and others took care of the budgets........

There you are standing, and all of a sudden you see a drawing, done by someone in a distant country. It is obviously supposed to look like you, but with a crooked nose, scimitar, and a couple of oppressed women that fear you. That is, amidst your sorrow and misery, the picture of you some distant artist far away is giving the world...

Of all these reasons, Mr cartoonist, your drawing is not revealing, but obscuring.

Actually, it's a lie. It is our government, that comes to them with swords, not the other way around.

Is the victim supposed to honor to the executioner's "free speech"? Should my father's beautiful aunt Anna and the 28 other persons from my father's family, who died in Nazi concentration camps, politely have said "To Hitler's right to lie..." when they stepped into the chamber of death?

Reconciliation, Fundamentalists and Reality Show

Now the prime minister is advocating reconciliation. But only because our export companies are angry; and there's even talk about boycot of the ship owners. Even Danish Mærsk, with their bloody war profits, are worried.....

But - with the other side of his tongue - Fogh speaks of "violent fundamentalists who are taking advantage of the situation". He's actually got some in his own little neocon chicken farm. "Dansk Folkeparti"'s Søren Krarup has explained to the parliament, that the war in Iraq "is the ultimate Christian war on Islam". And Ayatollah Krarup is strutting like a rooster, and his crusaders keep ravaging around Basra, armed to their teeth.

The Prime minister had no objections to Krarup's "militant fundamentalism" and also hasn't had much luck with his double-tongued "reconciliation".

It is interesting to think about, that Osama (in harmony with Bushs conspiracy theory regarding 9/11) in a few minutes was "judged" as the main enemy in the so-called "War On Terror". Nevertheless, both Bush, Blair and Fogh have for some peculiar reason been completely uninterested in catching him or anything else ever since. Osama only pops up as a little signal bell on the tv screen each time Bush is up for "election" or making a speech to the nation and needs us to be a little scared.

Hundred thousands of innocent have become "collateral damage" in this "War On Terror; but in almost five years this "War" hasn't produced one single indicted and convicted terrorist. Not one.

The "War On Terror" is unmistakebly one big theatrical show, written and directed by the biggest author of fiction since world war 2: the CIA.

Fogh was being had

Fogh was obviously bewildered left alone in front of the wolves by the same CIA, when the storm broke loose last week. He and "Dansk Folkeparti"'s Pia Kjærsgård were so certain Bush was going to come save them; but besides a little pocket change for the Danish export companies there was no solidarity from Big Brother. No, that is not how the piano plays in the professional mafia.

Bush took without blinking all his trump cards home. He critizised Jyllandsposten‚ (but has since then put in some counterweight), took the role as Islam's rescuer, and left Fogh with his shoulders down and cold sweat in front of the wild crowds.

Bush, on the other hand, could relax while following the anti-Muslim witch-hunt spread like birdflu across Europe - a perfect, destructive preparation for the next suicidal nocon war adventure: the Israeli-American attack on Iran and Syria.

As Iraq became a little more complicated than expected, and Iran a little stronger than expected, they're actually now years behind their plan, but are believed to be aiming at the end of March as the right time for the attack on Iran and the beginning of World War 3.

The Real Intentions

And then here we are at the root of the matter.

As Jyllandsposten's chief cultural editor, the PR man of the US neocons in Denmark, Flemming Rose, tells the New Herald Tribune, this caricature isue is about far more than a couple of drawings. Rose says - just like Donald Rumsfeld and the neocon ideological hitman Daniel Pipes this is the "Clash of Civilizations". That's neocon code for the annexation of the Middle East. A vast US nuclear waste junkyard with oilpipes and military bases with ten layers of barbed wire around it. The "Endlösung" for the Palestinian people. An endless West Bank.


And it doesn't even stop there. All nations including Denmark are going to get a sweep with the tar brush, and this isn't "in a few years". The Bush globalisation's black future has already begun. In the last couple of weeks

Denmark had a little taste of how it feels to be a manipulated colony.

Hundreds of millions of other people know all about that already.

The Arabic peoples, which Fogh is struggling to "calm down", already knows the ideas of "Project For A New American Century", as the US guys behind Flemming Rose are calling it. They know the paranoid

"Empire" won't even feel safe when it has its iron hand on each and every person on the planet.




Colossus on the feet of clay

The Iraqis have showed us something really important: the Empire is a colossus on feet of clay. While many Danes were busy with low-interest loans, the Iraqi's dented rifles halted the US Project World Supremacy - at least for a couple of years.

Include them in your prayers. They are protecting us too. They are all your daily gift.

But the Monster, The Empire, can only destroy. Fear has become the only thing, this ailing, late capitalism has to offer. There's nothing left to believe in. A growing number of US troops no longer believe in what they are doing. No wonder: More than 500,000 US soldiers are deadly ill from the nuclear radiation of Bush Sr's Gulf war 1991 - and Clinton's Cosovo war. The same has already started repeating with the troops of the present Iraq war. Depleated uranium is not quite that depleated anyway. It has a halflife of 4.5 billion years.

The Empire is corrupt, insane, indebted, hated. Fear has become its trademark. And we around the world we have seen, how most Danish media without any questions passed on the CIA - psychologist's synthetic psychoses on to the (partly) unsuspecting Danish population.

The american population are overwhelmingly against their own government, and there's now a majority for impeachment of Bush and other government officials. „The Alternative", the Democratic Party, has - with its conspicuous nightmarish slackness eventually become the only barrier against Bush's sudden departure, but might certainly get pushed aside by the popular demand.

Another superpower is about to implode, and is acting like a cornered beast.

Fogh and Co, as it has been felt for a couple of weeks now, make it a sure thing that Denmark effectively will be pulled down with them.

More about freedom of speech

Let me add a few words on Jyllandsposten's holy cause - freedom of speech.

Neither the newspaper nor Anders Fogh have ever worried about freedom of speech before, and have done all they could to take it away. We don't have freedom of speech in Denmark anymore, unless we're prepared to take the risk to get treated like a "terrorist". The Danish "terror Law" is a constitution-breaking hoax, that hasn't brought any terrorists out into the light, but has instead been used against freedom of speech (remember Greenpeace and "Foreningen oprør").

Freedom of speech, oh noble Jyllandposten..... Jyllandsposten has a great history of humanism, like e.g. the editorial after Hitlers excesses against the German jews in the Chrystal Night 1938:

"You have to admit Germany its clear right to rid itself of its Jews. But one must insist that it happens in a decent manner."

Laissez-Faire

If we don't do anything, there will be new persecutions in Denmark and throughout Europe. It won't be pretty. And as in Hitler's Germany, it's not going to be just the Muslims. The European Union January 27th passed a resolution equalling communism and nazism. An attempt to obligate the member countries to act against socialists and other progressives didn't pass, but the intentions are not to be mistaken and it is now up to each member country if and how they will go after socialists and others.

First they came for the communists,
and I did not speak out
--because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists,
and I did not speak out
--because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I did not speak out
--because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews,
and I did not speak out--
because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me --
but there was no one left to speak out for me.

(Pastor Martin Niemöller, active in the German resistance against nazism, prisoner in the concentration camp Sachenhausen 1945.



What has to be done

Dear friends, we can no longer pretend nothing is happening. We must show the world and ourselves respect. Life is too beautiful to mess up because of a little bunch of gangsters that don't know how to appreciate it.

We can't wait for the Social Democratic Party to do it for us. Like most Democrats in the US, most of the Social Democratic caucus voted for the war and its crimes, including for the latest expansions and extensions.

We can't shape our demands, wishes and dreams around the practical political possibilities in the parliament without censoring ourselves, because the parliament doesn't represent the people: The majority of the Danish people is against the war, but not the parliament. We must raise our demands and wishes as they are - and create the organism that can turn them into reality. A strong new grassroots movement, not only about the war but including all the horrible problems plaguing the population regardless of color of the skin, religion, or gender. This might open uop to a whole new popular inspiration, joy and creativity - break the evil circle of fear and turn Denmark into an alive, active, independent organism which could inspire other peoples, awaken new ideas and optimism and not like now: disgust.

I suggest, that we immediately, raise these demands:

1. The Fogh government must step down.

It has done enough harm. We and the world outside can't wait for the next ordinary election. It is a question of rebuilding our identity and be true to our democratic, open, friendly and wise tradition.

2. The Danish troops in Iraq and Afghanistan must be brought home now.

The war is a crime in defiance of UN's decisions and thereby in defiance of the Danish constitution. This comprehensive war crime is the framework around innumerable other war crimes - meaningless murders, torture, destruction and assaults on the population and its necessary installations and institutions. They are also in defiance of the Nuremberg treaty and all international human rights and war crime tribunals. After our experiences under the German occupation, this is beneath our dignity.

3. There has to be initiated a thorough independant investigation of the Fogh government's premises to pull Denmark into the war, and another investigation of the government's relationship with Bush's secret concentration camps and torture flights through Denmark.

4.The xenophobic laws have to be cancelled and replaced by others in tune with Danish democratic and humanist tradition. Racism, xenophobia and persecution does not belong anywhere.

These laws are more unknown to many Danes than they are to many in other contries. Well before Jyllandsposten's suicide bomb Hans Christian Andersen's mother country had already become an object for despise as a racist and xenophobic country. Besides, racism and hate destroy also any nation or group practicing them - and make the soul decompose.

5. The terror laws (Danish "Patriot Act") must be cancelled including the attcks on freedom of speech.

These laws are unconstitutional; they are totally against Danish democratic tradition and culture - they destroy fundamental human rights and civil rights without contributing the least to reducing terrorism - on the contrary.

6. Budgets for illegal wars and illegal weapons must be moved to education and creating workplaces . After the wars comes exploitation of underpaid work and slavery. This kind of abuse must be stopped whereever it is.

A man from the Danish governemnt party, Venstre, told me that we could close down all of Denmark's farming, because a single big farm in Ukraine could handle it all for a fraction of the price. But a Denmark without production is a sick, weak, dependant nation. No low-interest loans can replace production more than just a couple of years at the most, then the bill has to be payed. With what?

7. There has to be a thorough, informative, popular debate regarding Denmarks membership of EU.

It is crucial that this debate comes up as a real, lively, popular debate. We are becoming an incapable pawn in a big game of military, superpower illusions, oil wars, fascisation of the community and working conditions, andpoisoning of our food and destruction of our climate and our environment.

How should it be done?

All these are questions we can discuss by organizing meetings at work, in the unions, with your neighbors, the village, school - in media and everywhere (Jyllandsposten‚ e. g., has freedom of speech... )

What about a new independent popular movement, who can represent the popular demands without tactical parliamentary restrictions - thereby bringing the true, popular demands into the Danish reality in a strong and organized way, including in the parliament?

This is a suggestion from a regular composer of Danish popular tradition - from beautiful medieval folk songs to Buxtehude, from Blicher and H.C. Andersen to Jeppe Aakjær, Martin Andersen Nexø and Carl Nielsen; from Tove Ditlevsen to Erik Stinus. And at the same time - of global tradition, from Sappho to Neruda, Mikis Theodorakis, Nazim Hikmet, Mahmoud Darwish, Marvin Gaye, Harry Belafonte, Miriam Makeba..... Life is full of beauty. The horrifying and ugly doesn't have to be there. Now is the best time ever to wake up and take the initiative for the sake of our children's future.

Think how things could actually be....

This great change is not something we fight for for years - to see nothing will come out of it anyway. The change begins, in the same instance we make our decision. Freedom is in the process itself - when we realize we can do things on our own. Forget about watching tv tonight and talk to someone about what you can do.

What we need from ourselves is: that we preserve our respect for ourselves,

respect for others - regardless of skin color and beliefs; that we hold on to love, solidarity, the dream, the poetry, the humor, the beauty, the big heart, the open mind, the common sense. It is all old virtues - becoming new and fine when used. All of it uniting real popular Danish culture with all other peoples' cultures on this earth. When we dig deep down underneath greed and lies, the dreams, the tears and laughter the same all over the world. All the thousands of wonderful flowers, that make the culture of this planet, come out of one single root that all people understand.

That's the longing for freedom.

The bigwigs in the nazi movement were FREQUENTLY found demanding free speech throughout Germany prior to Hitler gaining governmental power. They published every kind of slander in their magazines and news-sheets, and then used the resultant court cases to promote their victim status.

In the UK at this moment in time, the ENTIRE body of the Mass Media ALREADY promotes the points of view held by the demonstrators, and excludes the points of view of their victims. A demonstration that demands a thing that already exists. The early nazis sought to change the Status Quo. These demonstrators seek to maintain it.

Of course, once the fascists have power, they ALWAYS describe their ideologies as freedoms, and ensure that THEIR intellectual backers, no matter how small in numbers, are as vocal as possible.

ANY Laws covering Slander, Libel, Defamation, and 'glorification', clergy in positions of political power, Mass Media under the control of one group of people, elections without FULL proportional representation, NO written constitution- THESE are the absolute destroyers of freedom of expression.

freedom of expression IS NOT powerful groups being allowed to be ever more ruthless in their propaganda attacks on their intended victims. This means that ANY GROUP closely associated with the oppression or murder of another group of humans CAN NEVER MORALLY CLAIM RIGHTS UNDER THE CONCEPT OF FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION.

Freedom of expression ONLY makes sense when the weakest are able to speak the loudest, therefore triggering a re-adjustment of the distribution of power. FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION IS ***NEVER*** ABOUT THE MOST POWERFUL OR SUCCESSFUL HAVING THE RIGHT TO SPEAK EVER LOUDER, AND THUS BECOMING EVEN ***MORE*** POWERFUL AND SUCCESSFUL IN THEIR GOALS.

Do you see weak or vunerable people at this protest? A dictator is defined as a person driven to maximise the extent to which OTHERS are forced to pay attention to his thoughts and ideas. Is this a proof of his freedom of expression?

"ONLY BY BECOMING A DICTATOR, CAN I PROVE TO MYSELF THAT I HAVE FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION." Does anyone here agree with this?

The massive protest against the (then pending) Iraq war a few years back was the very definition of a protest for freedom of expression. Why? Because the point of view being fought for was held by WEAK humans, and opposed by powerful humans, including the masters of UK politics, industry, military, law, and religion. Had the weak numerical majority suceeded over the powerful numerical minority, freedom of expression would have grown, and as a direct consequnce the world would have become much more balanced, and hence a better place.

When the world is in a bad place, if those that control it get MORE expressive power, the situation in the world will clearly get worse.

I can say this with TOTAL certainty about freedom of expression. If the DEAD of Fallujah were allowed to speak to each and every person in the West, Blair, Bush, and their respective NeoCons would be out of power in an instant, and better, awaiting trial for CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY. If the future dead of Blair's genocide of Iran were likewise allowed to speak, the world would rid itself of ALL nuclear/biological/chemical weapons, and those humans that researched/designed/manufactured or aquired them.

The dead have no voice, however, neatly solving THEIR freedom of expression issues. The living, suffering from that most dangerous of human afflictions, optimism, can be all to easily persuaded by those that created the piles of dead, that THEY need have no fear of suffering the same fate as those that lie rotting beneath the ground.

Today, if you oppose Blair, or any of his vile agents, you are free to see you words censored into oblivion under a million different excuses. If, however, you support Blair and his aims, no matter how foul your views, you will find a million places where they are welcome, and broadcast.

Blair is more powerful today than he has ever been. Those that support him speak ever louder, and are ever more successful in silencing their opposition. They do this even while claiming that THEIR voices only represent freedom of expression, a strange freedom that increasing ONLY applies to them. Paradoxically, as their power grows, so does the frequency with which they claim 'victim status', a claim backed up by quoting the few that DARE to express outrage at their words, and their exclusive control of the mechanisms used to broadcast to significant audiences.

There is another consideration. Are the babblings of an infant freedom of speech? Stupid question, because without meaning, there can be no significance, and without significance no-one cares. However, how can adults have freedom of speech if their words are no different from that young child's babbling, because said adult has been denied ANY good knowledge on which to base their thoughts.

My point is that freedom of expression ceases to have any real meaning for most people, when all it really means is freedom to parrot a Mass Media Message that the individual doesn't have the means to challenge or verify. In this situation, freedom of expression is really only a concern on an elite, people who seek to educate themselves beyond the control of the state, and its propaganda outlets. But then, is freedom a concept that really means anything when connected to the activities of an elite, or is power a more appropriate word?

Now, by elite, I am on this occasion refering to all powerful intellectual forces, not just those that represent the will of the state.

I know what freedom of expression means to me. It means NO CENSORSHIP OF ANY KIND IN A DISCUSSION. However, this does not prevent the use of POWER through various disruptive tactics. In the end, POWER is more significant than FREEDOM since the powerful human will make every kind of effort to be successful, and the non-powerful human will not. An uncensored discussion will end up filtering out the active participation of everyone but the ELITES, and their purpose is NOT to enlighten each other. A censored discussion, however, will be censored by a particular controlling elite, in order to preach a particular message to those that remain.

My priority is to have as many intellectual voices speak as possible, so that I stand a significant chance of discovering valuable truths or insights amongst all their differing viewpoints. Censorship usually discourages thinking, and encourages repetition of dogma.

Sorry, I'm boring you to 'prove' that there is no such thing as 'freedom of expression', at least not in the sense of what those words 'seem' to mean. The loudest voice may well NOT be the most accurate one, but the intellectual skills of the audience may NOT be up to making this determination. Powerful humans rarely have power because of the quality of their intellectual knowledge, or their ability to be moral or logical. Ordinary people have no wish to even use a 'freedom of expression' themselves outside their own social circles.

Let me end with this thought. A modern classroom. A classroom discussion. The discussion has been underway for some time, and the teacher, noticing that one child, a child known for her withdrawn nature, has yet to participate, makes a point of gently encouraging her to make a significant contribution. When the child speaks, her thoughts are clear, concise, and demolish the position held by the teacher. How does this scenario link to our concept of 'freedom of expression', or any issues raised by this 'march'?

I can accept "They originate in anger and despair accumulated over decades over the growing persecution of Muslims in many countries." So, why pretend it is something else and cause confusion and even more bigotry and clash of cultures? It is only cartoons after all. If peoples are oppressed and exploited they should come right out and say so, instead of pussyfooting around using religion as an excuse. Let them condem the governments and the corporations who are the real villians, not a handful of cartoonists for goodness sake!