one of the main shot by a sniper in the confrontations was activist abraham. he lost his legs during an israeli air strike in two thousand and eight. the u.s. embassy in honduras has been surrounded by protesters angry at waiting for three weeks for a definitive result in the presidential election demonstrators accuse the u.s. of interfering in last month's vote which both candidates say they won government forces in southern yemen of regain control of a town following three years of fighting with fighters but it is sources told al jazeera the yemeni army finally managed to drive the rebels from. the towns in an important oil and gas producing region in a province it's one of the last two things strongholds in the south of yemen well gandhi has taken over from his mother sagna as president of india's main opposition party the congress party lost popularity over the past three years since defeat in the general election by the b j p oster is about to become the only country in

western europe with a far right party in government the winner of october's parliamentary elections the conservative people's party has reached a coalition deal with the anti immigration freedom party as the headlines the news continues here on al-jazeera but first let's turn to up front. facing realities is a piece of machinery goes wrong is there a train of litigation true which we can bring the legal system to bear getting to the heart of the matter i don't think we needed the ball but some of my british officials did hear their story on talk to how does iraq at this time. when the right to free speech conflicts with protecting minorities how should democracies respond and do muslim communities have a particular problem with the principle of free expression or has islam been unfairly targeted the debate over free speech and on from special.

with hate crimes on the rise across the west recent debates around free speech have become all the more pressing from all humans in the us about whether white supremacists should be given platforms to say bigoted things to claims that free speech is under attack at universities the issue is being hotly debated and politicized so while freedom of expression is one of the backbones of democracy should be protected no matter what even if it means defending so-called hate speech and can government even be trusted to defend both minorities and civil liberties to debate these questions i'm joined from rio de janeiro by glenn greenwald journalist lawyer all for and co-founder of the intercept and the new york by stanley fish a us legal scholar and public intellectual and author of the book there's no such thing as free speech and it's

a good thing to thank you both for joining me on upfront glenn let me start with you most people would agree that free speech is integral to democracy and should be defended as much as possible but does that really mean that we also have to protect the rights of racists islamophobia anti semites homophobes missile gymnast's to spread some pretty poisonous and hate filled ideas is a lot of misunderstanding and distortion even of what free speech is supposed to be about no quite the opposite first of all the minute you start empowering state institutions or government officials to punish people or to imprison people or to bar them from expressing certain ideas because the majority or the government does like those ideas you know i have free speech in any meaningful sense. all you have is a society in which the ideas of the government or the majority approves of are the ones that are permitted to be expressed and all the other ones can send you to prison or get you find or otherwise punish secondly i think it's in the really important truth to recognize that just as a matter of prog meant to say there's no such thing as banning ideas it has never

worked it certainly can't work in the age of the internet maybe we could have an ideal world in which it's possible to ban racism and ban the expression of islamophobia the opposite is true that when you try and do it you turn them into martyrs you actually make them stronger i used to represent racist and they loved when people tried to censor them because nothing made them stronger and then thirdly it's astonishing to me that anybody would trust any government let alone say the trumpet ministration or the jeff sessions lead department of justice to decide what is in a speech but i don't know of any governments that i would trust to make that decision stanley fish in new york listening to glenn that just pick up a couple of those points glenn is saying that you can't really have any kind of free speech of government allowed to censor that speech and the racists kind of like being censored because it empowers them what's your response to those two point. i don't disagree with much of what glenn said but my take on the entire question i think is a bit different from his for me the real question is whether you regard freedom of

speech as a principle or the you are guarded as a value the difference is if it's a principle it's freestanding and is in some sense its own justification it's held to apply in almost all if not all circumstances if on the other hand free speech is a value then it's a value in competition with or in a mix with other values and you ask other kinds of empirical questions in free speech cases what you have to do is first calculate the costs of regulating the speech in question emotional political economic course and then calculate the costs of allowing the speech to flourish add up the columns see which costs more and make your decision accordingly i would go by that balancing idea rather than any kind of principle glenn what's wrong with balancing these different values. well first of

all it's an incredibly subjective assessment so again in general it's not by definition marginalized groups who and empower and making these decisions and in fact if you look at the people whose free speech rights have been attacked it hasn't overwhelmingly been racist or islamophobia or immigration extremists in the united states and western europe it's been the very marginalized groups who are cited as the reason we need censorship in the first place it's been people who advocate a boycott of israel it's been people who advocate all kinds of extreme racial a gala terrorism views or theories of gender equality or l g b t's by definition marginalized people are the most vulnerable to those determinations being made against them not in their favor and i just can't imagine why we would want to have a list of ideas that you're literally not allowed to express upon pain of going to jail or otherwise being punished by the state because the calculations are so

likely to be made and bad ways before i go back to stanley get him to respond to just one quick thing other ways of restricting free speech for example at a university no platforming saying we don't want to speak at a university because it does conflict with all the values we don't want to look indorsing his hate filled views or hate filled views not saying we don't want you to speak or our institution of people that without some attack on free speech do you do at least and understand why an institution might want to do that sure i think in an academic institution so you know you can say well private companies have the right if you're on your twitter you have the right to say i don't want these views being expressed on my form i think academic institutions the nature of them ought to be uniquely to encourage free inquiry and free discourse and that's the last place we ought to want ideas being deemed off limits or restricted study to respond to and specifically his point about how can you trust the government to regulate what is good speech bad speech hate speech and hate speech yeah i think that's the that's an important question and i'm glad that glen has raised it.

people on his side of the street believe that the marketplace of ideas allowed to operate freely will in fact produce judgments that are sounder or less partisan than the judgment of the legislatures or courts that if bad ideas let a loud to flourish in the air then rational debate and deliberation by rational persons will explosive deficiencies and they will wither and die the only argument i find against that is all over the corded history it never happens that way and in fact if you allow for example holocaust denial to flourish the result will not be that people will see the absurdity incoherence and evil of the idea in fact people who would never thought of it will say always and will become adherents to

the army of the holocaust deniers i'm kind of astonished to hear what stanley just said because the history that i'm aware of which is exactly the opposite lesson so look at the racial progress that the united states made throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty first century led by people like martin luther king that progress wasn't made because racism was declared illegal to express nor because it was denied a pot form it was because martin luther king and other civil rights leaders were able to persuade an appeal to people's consciences that that kind of thinking is evil destructive toxic and wrong and you see that over and over if you look at the charlottesville protesters the neo nazis letting the march the whole thing entire country and the next event that they tried to hold in boston fifty of them showed up and thirty thousand protesters showed up against them because everybody heard their ideas and were sickened by them and that is a much more effective way to defeat horrible ideas than trying to empower the

government to. to forcibly suppress it stanley i continue to think that all of this talk about free speech puts too much value either positive and negative on the act speaking freely or producing certain forms of speech it's in some in some contexts useful and in some contexts not now as far as universities go universities have nothing to do with free speech the reigning value in universities is freedom of inquiry and freedom of inquiry involves the censoring and that being views the entire college and university system is a system of exclusion in which many more people disallowed in the speech forum then are allowed so i simply repeat what i said before including political context freedom of speech is a value not a principle and it's a value of which we must ask the question in any context is it worth it and what's

on the other side if we allow it fully to flourish that is a perfect formula for authoritarianism and tyranny if you and i don't mean to use i personally but if you look at any regimes around the world in egypt and iran throughout asia throughout south america and you look at what dictatorships have done in imprisoning dissidents and wondering off limits any kind of political speech that they find threatening what stanley just said is the exact rational but they years we can all out this speech because it's disruptive it's subversive it's harmful and the harms of allowing the speech outweigh the values of it i don't trust any institution or any government to apply that reasoning in a way that will be anything other than destructive the far better and healthier way is to say there are no ideas that can send you to prison or subject you to punishment for advocating or expressing delenn stonily we'll have to leave it there thank you very much for joining me from. more than

a decade since the publication of the infamous drawings of the prophet muhammad the danish cartoons contrived as it continues to reverberate in debates over freedom of expression the right to offend and islamophobia does the publication of cartoons mocking a religion or prophet serve a much needed liberal and democratic purpose or is it an insensitive attack on a minority group and do muslim communities have a particular problem with the principle of free speech to discuss and debate these issues i'm joined by flemming rose the man who commissioned the cartoons as culture editor of danish newspaper poston and is now a senior fellow at the cato institute unnecessary malik a london based columnist thank you both for joining me up front flemming rose your two thousand and five decision to publish those notorious cartoons of the prophet of islam in a danish newspaper where you were culture editor at the time led to global controversy royer its loss of innocent lives or three months later we went later

but but looked about threats to your own life i believe you now have to travel with security in europe just remind us in our view what did you set out to achieve by publishing what many would argue a very offensive cartoons you know. well the cartoons were commissioned as part of and story n.t.p. server censorship or not when it comes to covering islam in denmark and maybe western europe there was a children's book written by the endangered author about the life of the prophet muhammad and he were in popular saying that you know i've read this book but i had difficulties finding an illustrator and that became a national story so there was a discussion and we called it not with the towards part by calling industries or. the c.e.o. arms and so on and so forth and then report suggested why don't we invite. as a cartoonist to draw the prophet and then we'll find out if there's

a. in search of a drop of the most offensive word no no no no no no my invitation was draw the prophet as you see him and. only three or four in fact depict the prophet. mystery millikan love the freedom of expression is a fundamental right in shrine and in the universal declaration of human rights long considered a cornerstone of democracy doesn't need to be defended at all costs and does not mean that you do have to defend views or in this case cartoons that you might find abhorrent or offensive from a religious or whatever perspective i think we need to be careful when we need when we make that assertion because very few of these so-called fundamental rights are born out of objective circumstances so i don't think that freedom of speech can be applied kind of blindly across the board because its subjects don't necessarily share the same status or access to power. as the people who are attacking them and

that's the first thing the second thing is i do think that we do have an issue in islam with totec mick. figures such as the prophet people are very defensive about it that hasn't always been the case but i think that. it's seems to be an issue that has now become linked to their relative power or the relative lack of power muslim communities have in european countries or western countries in general they feel like it's an ad hoc on them as a minority as a racial minority as an economic minority and so i think one needs to kind of fan out a little bit and see it less as an absolutist issue on freedom of speech and more about kind of the relative status of the targets of that freedom of speech i think the very important point about minority and majority is because that was a very frequent argument against a courtroom so i think paul is a very fluid concept you can be very powerful in one concept. he may

belong to a. minority in the larger community but he may be very very powerful inside his own community and decide you know who can see what and who kind of so you want to. sue sue and if you tick i mean if you chick. power structures something. that you're not a large critic criticize minority religion or ideology you know that i'm not is sorry mr you go on common sorry i don't think i don't think anyone saying particularly i believe i'm saying that you shouldn't mock the religion of a minority but i think when that minority is that upset and sees it as an attack then i don't want to be surprised that's not to justify any kind of terrorist or terrorist attacks or violence but the pictures of the prophet are totems like the flag is a toast like you know the national anthem is a toast them and if people feel that they are subjugated under under attack the the

attack of these totems is taken quite personally but i think i think it's interesting here that if you do it all the violence that erupted in the aftermath of the publication that consumes all the violence happened in places where you did not enjoy freedom. expression less part of violence from a gun in any three of us support violence against anyone just about the actual substance what nestle raised about a community feeling under assault a lot of danish muslims who don't wish to any harm do feel as if they were demonized at a time when the far right in denmark who you've criticized were attacking them you may have a right to publish it we have a duty to be offensive or provoked i would be honest people do i mean i mean you know one of the things i learned from the cartoon crisis is that people can have very different. legitimate opinions about this the key is that you i mean there are things that offend me when i just switch on my t.v. i'm very offended. so. but often this is

a quiet individual. thing here you can demonize. i mean you have genocide that starts with. with a verbal agreement isolation and incitement to violence that there's always a risk or so it is during the nazi period but the fact of the matter is in fact that in in germany you had hate speech laws in fact criminalizing attacks on jews and it didn't help you to support socialism getting no necessary hate speech laws is not something you would indulge in european countries plenty of european countries have the. i think this is a tricky question i don't think it's one that anyone has come up with a satisfactory answer for it makes me quite nervous to legislate on hate speech because who does who legislates who gets to say what's dangerous and what's not. but at the same time i also very aware that hate speech does lead to. radicalization whether it's the fact that we've seen increasing attacks against

black people and muslims in the us how all of that in the u.k. . radical muslim organizations kind of were allowed to preach freely and they didn't and magical ization so i think that there is a direct correlation between the unfettered permission of hate speech the rise in hate crime and the incitement to hatred but also from a row said power is fluid and transience and i don't trust legislators to make those. those demarkation in a way that then that applies universally or of authority if you if you if you look at the few stories on the relationship between speech and actual violence there is no correlation i mean in fact in country where you have more freedom of expression that is you can do here speech with more speech you in fact have as it has existed really there's been a record number of attacks on mosques and muslims instead of just sort of sort of

what i'm going to. look at to look at just below very good looks and what i was thinking about i mean. it is clear correlation is not causation between the trump rhetoric the presidential election and attacks on muslims are not it's not support. the point there is no correlation between criminalizing good speech and this violence of mystery. yes but let me let's let's let's do look at egypt here they go look at egypt look at back there let's look at egypt the fact that coptic minorities come under attack in egypt as a direct result of the fact that hate speech against copts is allowed and not and not frowned upon and so i think that it's a slight sort of logical. inconsistency here if we're saying that there is a direct correlation between hate speech and crime then by definition there would be a direct correlation between banning hate speech unless and right but he was actually the last of the one direction that's a lot you can take little. that

a lot of people do in fact if you call it a culture of free speech where you move to manage disagreement. in the way where you do not use violence you do not use intimidation and threats you will see a decrease in violence think the point about creating a culture of disagreement in the west a lot of western countries take pride in the u.k. where you are right now takes great pride in things like the life of brian mocking christianity movies like the life of brian and other so other such comedies and they say well why should islam get special treatment why can't muslims get on board with this whole idea of satire called humor and not take everything so seriously would you say to them that's actually a prime illustration of the power point about freedom of speech the life of brian and saw targets close around him he says such a great part of british culture because christianity and the church in particular

was incredibly powerful in the west and particularly in europe as there is a whole heritage of satire against the church that is founded upon making fun of people that are more powerful and so if the context is hugely important what you mean when you make fun of islam you're not making fun of a religious establishment that has existed in the west for centuries and had very intimate ties to power. you're making fun of their religion of very recently arrived minorities that make up maybe four five percent. of. european country and i think it's about two percent in denmark and they tend to be overwhelmingly more of the forefront of what i do and over and overwhelmingly of. subjugated economic status ok let me put that point to fleming it's easy to target symbols it's easy to say you want to target the symbols of a marginalized powerless community that's already subjected to racism and

discrimination much harder to go after more powerful actors or figures or totems to use an extreme phrase. about music not punching down i mean these cartoons grew out of context and context is very important i mean there were twelve cartoons made it look at all twelve cartoons if you look at all twelve cartoons you can see no studio type times for the united states and we were into creating the muslim minority into a danish tradition of satire and we were saying to the muslims we do not ask more of you we do not list of you what we ask of you exactly the same as we do ok if we are going to be selling fruit and in their. mission you are not outsiders you are not strangers we do not treat your children or do it your individual i want to develop this point and come back to this room before going to pick up on something you said you say would treat you like we treat everyone else we are also on record saying that the freedom to publish things doesn't mean you publish everything you said we would never publish pornographic images of rafik details of dead bodies

a lot of journalists agree with you swear words you do exercise self-censorship in certain areas a very many journalists i would think i said that suited story line of the newspaper where you don't have to look at agree with that. you will get it because i don't use paper you weren't on the cover the newspaper you worked in two thousand and three three years before the same newspaper you worked for turned down cartoons of jesus because the editor said at the time i don't think readers will enjoy the drawings. i think they will provoke an outcry therefore i will not use them to understand why a lot of danish muslims are saying the muslims are north as usual you bus the muslims but not the christians or the jews. and you know it was that it was me who made that decision. and i mean you don't agree with that decision i don't agree with that decision is a scary part understand why a lot of muslim you're so double standard yes no no. listen in fact you don't suppose and you did so populist cartoons mocking christians or jesus i did

that so i mean this was a specific instance incident where the. those cartoons were bad i should have told him so but i agree that it did it created a cause for attacking us from stand despite the fact of the matter is you know the history of the newspaper when it comes to publishing cartoons or to mocking christians if you was a citizen let me put this point is there a chance that having these kind of very public arguments that fleming wanted to start that actually in the long run as he's now suggesting help minorities help muslim communities i think the hope is yes but i think events on the ground on a day to day basis convince us that that's not the case if they view that having more conversations about islam we talk about muslims every day in the tabloids on t.v. we're talking about it now going to have this conversation feel years now and all that i see has happened is that muslims have become more demonized more identified more vivisected and more essential ised by the mainstream and so i think in terms

of theory i think that sounds like a good theory but in practice that has not been the case so i mean briefly last word. european countries are not have not throughout history been very good at managing diversity and i see right now that the response on behalf of politicians to this challenge is let's put more limitations on speech why i believe that if you if you celebrate more diversity in terms of culture and religion then you will also have to will come more diversity when it comes to ways of expressing ourselves and that implies confrontations disagreement og humans and so on and so forth the key is just that we do not we talk to islands we do not use intimidation and threats flemming rose will have to leave it there thank you both for joining me up front that's all showed up from about next week.

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i really felt liberated as a journalist was all about getting to the truth as i would that's that's what this joke about. our war on terror begins without god but it does not in there no terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat than the regime of saddam hussein and this is a regime that has something to hide they had prepared a significant propaganda offer and guess what not one w m d shite was found in iraq since the one nine hundred ninety one iraq a deadly deception at this time on al jazeera.