---
title: "Absolute Free Speech"
date: 2004-01-01T00:00:00-00:00
draft: true
---
The first series of public demonstrations that clearly focused on freedom of expression took place during late March and Early April 1909. One hundred years later, Egypt's phenomenal efforts in Geneva resulted in the United Nations passing a resolution. About the same time, the centennial celebration of the 1909 protests attracted 300 people at best. The original actions were 10,000 people strong and called for the 'end to dictatorship' supported by Britain and its military bases, the largest being in the Suez.

Some 20% of humans today relatively practice their right to S-3 (Speech minus hatred, bomb recipes and child pornography). For the rest of us in the South, heavy-handed repression uses those three to keep populations under control. After 60 years of the Universal Declaration, is it time for absolute free speech?

Despite Egypt's relatively large comic-reading subculture, crossing age-groups and social classes, the content of comics are hardly anything but Disney's. The stories have been Egyptianised during Nasser's era, and since the operation has been sold in the late 1990s to private publisher al-Adwaa (which main line of business is supplementary text books), naked citizens of Duckburgh are now put back to modesty by the censor's thick black marker, a kind of editing that resembles what a pious Saudi or Israeli publication would do to image of real, human females.

Mohamed al-Shafie's adults-only graphic novel Metro, therefore, is potentially readily available to a large readership. Its message, however, is very different than what you get from Mickey Mouse, or even Donald who is content being from the lower class. The first page from Metro reads: "Today, I decided to rob a bank. I do not know when I grew all this anger inside. All I know is, those people are on one side, and I am on another. I have one thing left: my mind. And finally, I am putting my thoughts to action".

ash-Shafie dedicated his novel to the soul of his parents, and '[T]o the Egyptian bloggers, who make me feel the world is still alight'

I did not buy my copy of Metro before it was illegally confiscated from bookstores and the publisher's office. I 'scored' my copy from the Hisham Mubarak Law Center during a press conference. The same day witnessed

Malamih publisher Mohamed ash-Sharkawi (whom I came to know in 2005 as a democracy activist newly arriving to Cairo from the Nile Delta city of Kafr ash-Sheikh) does not exclude his history as a reason for targeting his publishing house. For the summer of 2006, Sharkawi became an icon of Kifaya, the small-and-loud loose coalition of pro-democracy activists (from all four major political currents in Egypt: Pan-Arabist, Liberal, Socialist and Islamist, making together Egypt's 'New Opposition', which tends to be more militant that recognised political parties from corresponding currents. Political parties are practically licensed by the very people in power) as he was kidnapped from a sit-in support an independent judiciary movement, blindfolded and brutally assaulted by police, before being sodomised in Kasr an-Nil police station with what he thinks is a piece of cardboard, then being kept for two months while his body injuries heal. The story received wide attention, from G.W. Bush and his press corps to the press in Benin.

الكتاب فيه كمال الشاذلي و مفيد فوزي و بز و نيك و كلمات عرص و خولات و سرقة بنك و نؤيد مبارك و قتيل و البوليس مسك حد تاني و تقفيش النسوان في المظاهرات و البلطجية ال ب20 جنيه
و إننا لازم نغير النظام كلنا مع بعض
و شرموط

Karl Popper's definition of an Open Society. Freedom is restricted only by other people's physical safety. Free elections on a Western Democratic model alone do not prevent Fascism. Only an active population, not laws and states, can keep hate speakers in check.
