For background on the assassination attempt see my previous post – Another Attempt to Murder Free Speech in Denmark
Chris Knowles of the International Civil Liberties Alliance:
The following is our response to an article on The Copenhagen Post website entitled Hedegaard lashes out following failed assassination attempt.
My organisation the International Civil Liberties Alliance (ICLA) awarded Mr Hedegaard our Defender of Freedom Award last year in the European Parliament.
Unlike many newspapers, he is willing to stand up and speak truth to power. Newspapers tend to no longer do their job of informing the public and challenging the powerful. Instead they provide a skewed ideologically driven picture of the world. Rather than report the facts they choose to demonise individuals like Mr Hedegaard and in doing so deliberately put them in danger.
Lars Hedegaard has shown willingness even to put his life on the line in the cause of freedom. How many newspaper editors can say the same thing?
ICLA supports Mr Hedegaard’s call to remove the blasphemy clause. Indeed we call for the abolition of all blasphemy laws worldwide. This includes laws that are effectively blasphemy laws that are dressed in the clothes of secularism. For instance the United Kingdom abolished its blasphemy law but incorporated similar restrictions in other laws. It is the freedom to talk freely about all philosophies that needs to be protected by law. Blasphemy laws stifle freedom of speech and prevent the progressive development of our society.
Lars, we salute your bravery and your continuing commitment to freedom.
Chris Knowles
International Civil Liberties Alliance
Lars Hedegaard speaks with Michael Coren about surviving an assassination attempt:
Swedish journalist Ingrid Carlqvist and the great Dane Lars Hedegaard of the Free Press Society join Michael Coren to discuss their new enterprise, Dispatch International:
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Why Dispatch International?
The mainstream media has deteriorated to a point where it constitutes a threat to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
The fourth estate was supposed to act as corrective to the legislative, judicial and administrative powers but has in fact become a part of the ruling elite. It no longer considers it its duty to criticise or expose.
One survey after another shows that the vast majority of Western journalists suffer from groupthink. They do not inform the public about what is happening in the real world but want to educate and mould the citizens to conform to their own preconceived ideas of what ought to be.
Vast swathes of reality are brushed under the carpet because the mainstream media considers them antithetical to the multiculturalist, cultural relativist, “green” and anti-Judean-Christian ideologies they strive to impose on the public.
This cannot be allowed to stand. The time has come to publish a real newspaper.
On 30 August we will issue a test issue of Dispatch International. It will appear as a print paper in Danish and Swedish with e-versions in Danish, Swedish, English and German.
More languages will be added as the need arises.
If the test issue is all well received as we antitipate, we will commence regular, weekly publication on Thursday, January 3, 2013.
In the meantime, click onto our website: http://www.Dispatch-International.com.
Chief editors are Ingrid Carlqvist, former news editor of the Swedish daily Kvällsposten, and Lars Hedegaard, former editor-in-chief of the Copenhagen daily Information. Ingrid is Chair of the Swedish Free Press Society and Lars of the Danish Free Press Society.
Together with Canadian free speech activist and board member of the Canadian Free Press Society Bjorn Larsen we have set up a company that is protected from any attempt at a hostile take-over.
We can neither be bought, nor will we be dependent on public subsidies or advertising income.
Dispatch International is your paper. We have no other purpose than to keep you informed of all the news that is fit to print – but rarely is.
Let us make this a success.
All best
Ingrid Carlqvist
Lars Hedegaard
Bjorn Larsen