sociopolitical
arts

ai weiwei (born 28 august 1957) is a chinese artist and activist, who is also active in architecture, curating, photography, film, and social and cultural criticism. ai collaborated with swiss architects herzog & de meuron as the artistic consultant on the beijing national stadium for the 2008 olympics.[3] in addition to his art work he has investigated government corruption and cover-ups, especially the alleged corruption scandal during the construction of the sichuan schools that collapsed in the 2008 sichuan earthquake. he intensively uses the internet to communicate with people all over china, especially the young generation. on 3 april 2011 police detained him at beijing airport. his studio in the capital was sealed off, and his staff interrogated pursuant to official allegations of “economic crimes”. on 20 april ai was appointed visiting professor of the berlin university of the arts. [wikipedia]

muslim girls are enraged because of a line in the speech of hans teeuwen at the unveiling of a monument commemorating his friend theo van gogh, who was brutally murdered by a muslim in the name of islam.
this video clip of teeuwen eloquently advocating freedom of speech while being interviewed by three female muslim tv presenters has been chosen as “dutch tv moment of 2007“.

the highest rated comment on youtube:
i wish you could all understand dutch, the subtitles don’t do justice to the poor performance of the halal chicks and hans teeuwen. they were so childish and insulted him by degrading_ him. “hallo, hallo,” is a way of saying: “shut up, i want to say something!” and when he said that religious people tend to think they have a monopoly on the truth, one of them said: “wow, you do know some difficult words, don’t you?”
i’m not a big fan of teeuwen, but he absolutely rocked in this clip!

“i think that if you use the so called “strong words” you’ll get your point across faster and you can save a lot of beating around the bush. why are people afraid of words? sometimes the dumbest thing that gets said makes the point for ya.”
-frank zappa