In Paris there was a march for “free speech”, occasioned by the evisceration of a satire/outrage magazine whose repeated focus gag was piss-takes of Muhammad, and to a lesser extent of Jesus, the Pope, rabbis, etc. The march was led by, led by, a group of characters including:The Prime Minister of Turkey, the country which has jailed more journalists than anyone in the worldThe Foreign Minister of Egypt, which has Peter Greste and two other Al Jazeera staff serving 10-year prison terms on absurd charges/convictionsPutin’s Foreign Minister, a government whose shadowy affiliated gangs have murdered dozens of journalists in the past decade and a halfThe Foreign Minister of Bahrain (‘nuff said).The Prime Minister of Poland, whose government raided the Polish Charlie Hebdo equivalent when it “embarrassed” the governmentThe Prime Minister of Ireland, where blasphemy remains an enforced criminal offenceA sheikh from Qatar, where people are serving 15-year terms for “blasphemous” poetryLeaders of Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and the Palestinian territories, who all jailed journosIsrael’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose Israel Defence Force lethally targeted journos during the Gaza invasionUK Prime Minister David Cameron, where Defence Advisory Notices and super-injunctions keep a host of live information from the publicThe Saudi ambassador to France, whose country has handed out a thousand lashes to a man convicted of blasphemyThe Secretary-General of NATO, which deliberately bombed the Belgrade station of Yugoslav public TV during the Kosovo operation, killing 16 journalistsThe US Attorney-General, who works for a government which has cracked down harder on whistleblowers than any other.
In Paris there was a march for “free speech”, occasioned by the evisceration of a satire/outrage magazine whose repeated focus gag was piss-takes of Muhammad, and to a lesser extent of Jesus, the Pope, rabbis, etc. The march was led by, led by, a group of characters including:The Prime Minister of Turkey, the country which has jailed more journalists than anyone in the worldThe Foreign Minister of Egypt, which has Peter Greste and two other Al Jazeera staff serving 10-year prison terms on absurd charges/convictionsPutin’s Foreign Minister, a government whose shadowy affiliated gangs have murdered dozens of journalists in the past decade and a halfThe Foreign Minister of Bahrain (‘nuff said).The Prime Minister of Poland, whose government raided the Polish Charlie Hebdo equivalent when it “embarrassed” the governmentThe Prime Minister of Ireland, where blasphemy remains an enforced criminal offenceA sheikh from Qatar, where people are serving 15-year terms for “blasphemous” poetryLeaders of Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and the Palestinian territories, who all jailed journosIsrael’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose Israel Defence Force lethally targeted journos during the Gaza invasionUK Prime Minister David Cameron, where Defence Advisory Notices and super-injunctions keep a host of live information from the publicThe Saudi ambassador to France, whose country has handed out a thousand lashes to a man convicted of blasphemyThe Secretary-General of NATO, which deliberately bombed the Belgrade station of Yugoslav public TV during the Kosovo operation, killing 16 journalistsThe US Attorney-General, who works for a government which has cracked down harder on whistleblowers than any other.