Who Says Free Speech Extends to Agent Provocateurs?

An American film ridiculing the Prophet Mohammad is triggering anti-Western violence across the Middle East.   That film was intended to achieve that very result.   On what possible basis can it be defended as an expression of free speech?

We used to have a name for people like the militant Christian radicals behind this film.   We called them "agent provocateurs."   They set out to provoke or incite violence or other forms of criminality.   In this case, their film is their instrument of provocation.   This has nothing to do with free speech except within the recesses of a deeply addled mind.

We are all deemed to intend the logical and foreseeable consequences of our acts.   Those who produced and released this movie not only foresaw the result but sought to achieve it.  Hence the attacks,  the assaults and the murder lie directly at their feet just as surely as it does at the feet of those who actually attacked the diplomatic missions.   The provocateurs fueled these attacks and instigated the violence.

These nutjobs are religious fundamentalists (much like our own Harper) steeped in dark religious superstition.   They eagerly await Armageddon, the Apocalypse and, in their twisted minds, the Rapture that will supposedly sweep them up to sit beside their god.  They set out to harm us to incite us to respond - in kind, with violence - and make their desired and intended bad situation far, far worse.

They have to be stopped.