And not a single mention of Voltaire...

Tags: free speech quotes

"Free speech is to a great people what winds are to oceans and malarial regions, which waft away the elements of disease and bring new elements of health; and where free speech is stopped, miasma is bred, and death comes fast."
Henry Ward Beecher

"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."
Eric Arthur Blair (George Orwell)

"A people which is able to say everything becomes able to do everything."
Napoleon Bonaparte

"Without free speech no search for truth is possible... no discovery of truth is useful... Better a thousandfold abuse of free speech than denial of free speech. The abuse dies in a day, but the denial slays the life of the people, and entombs the hope of the race."
Charles Bradlaugh

"Everybody favours free speech in the slack moments when no axes are being ground."
Heywood C. Broun

"Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom."
Benjamin Nathan Cardozo

“If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.”
Noam Chomsky

"Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. They know its power. Thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers, founded in injustice and wrong, are sure to tremble, if men are allowed to reason…
"There can be no right of speech where any man…[is] compelled to suppress his honest sentiments.
"Equally clear is the right to hear. To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker."
Frederick Douglass

"Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want rain without thunder and lightning."
Frederick Douglass

"Freedom of speech and freedom of action are meaningless without freedom to think. And there is no freedom of thought without doubt."
Bergen Evans

"Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever."
Nadine Gordimer

"The very aim and end of our institutions is just this: that we may think what we like and say what we think."
Oliver Wendell Holmes

"It is clear that the freedom of expression and opinion is a fundamental right, the mother of all rights."
Abid Hussain

"Freedom to speak... can be maintained only by promoting debate."
Walter Lippmann

"Freedom of expression must be considered sacred and thought can only be corrected by counter thought."
Naguib Mahfouz

"Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties."
John Milton

"You have not converted a man because you have silenced him."
John Morley

"Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself."
Salman Rushdie

"The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism."
Wole Soyinka

"My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular."
Adlai Stevenson

Just so that everyone is clear...

Tags: Bush war terror Iraq WMD al-Qaeda lie

The US justified the invasion of Iraq on the basis of its large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. Those of us who maintained Iraq had no WMD at the time of the invasion were mocked as naive, and called appeasers.

Then the US confirmed that, actually, we were right...

US gives up search for Iraq WMD

The US had also justified the invasion of Iraq on the basis of Saddam Hussein’s links to, and support of, al-Qaeda. Brutal dictator that he was, the one thing you couldn’t accuse Saddam of was support for Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. Not when he was the dictator of a secular state whose regime was directly threatened by the prospect of an Iranian style theocracy. Accusations of naivety, appeasement, treachery etc flew thick and fast.

Who knew that a little over 3 years later the CIA would agree with us?

Saddam “had no link to al-Qaeda”

Those of us who opposed the invasion of Iraq said that it would merely serve to inflame Arab and Muslim opinion against the West, and far from creating a safer world, would merely serve to increase the threat of terrorism, and draw fresh recruits to the cause of al-Qaeda. Again we were mocked, and called reactionaries.

Then the US confirmed that this too has come true...

US report says Iraq fuels terror

So, Mr Bush. About those reasons for taking your eye off the ball with regards to Afghanistan, the Middle East, terrorism and a host of other security issues whilst you pursued revenge against the guy who “tried to kill my dad” as you so eloquently put it.

Is it so hard to admit you were wrong?

I certainly do not mean to crow about this (well, perhaps just a little) but after almost four years of characterisation as a pinko- commie- faggot- Islamofascist- appeasing- liberal- homo- freedom- hating- peacenik, it’s kind of nice to know that the CIA, the Pentagon, the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Iraq Survey Group all come under this heading too.

I suppose it’s too much to expect that lessons have been learned?

Mission accomplished...