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Obama Address at U.N.: No Speech Justifies Violence

27 September 2012

This video was filmed by the Associated Press at the 67th session of the U.N. General Assembly and acquired by the State Department's Bureau of International Information Programs in September 2012. It features President Obama.

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But in 2012, at a time when anyone with a cell phone
can spread offensive views around the world with

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a click of a button, the notion that we can control
the flow of information is obsolete. The question,

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then, is how do we respond? And on this we must agree:
There is no speech that justifies mindless violence.

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There are no words that excuse the killing of innocents.
There's no video that justifies an attack on an embassy.

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There's no slander that provides an excuse for people to
burn a restaurant in Lebanon, or destroy a school in Tunis,

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or cause death and destruction in Pakistan.
In this modern world with modern technologies,

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for us to respond in that way to hateful speech empowers
any individual who engages in such speech to create

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chaos around the world. We empower the
worst of us if that’s how we respond.