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Mashable.com
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The Internet giant’s petition to the tribunal says its free speech rights have been violated because it is legally prohibited from discussing even the vaguest details of government surveillance requests.
Posted on Jun 18, 2013
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By Eugene Robinson — The unwarranted snooping, which was revealed last week, would be troubling enough if it were an isolated incident. But it is part of a pattern that threatens to redefine investigative reporting as criminal behavior.
Posted on May 20, 2013
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Ben Fredericson (xjrlokix) (CC BY 2.0)
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The hacker collective’s Twitter account was temporarily suspended Wednesday after the group posted personal information belonging to members of the Westboro Baptist Church.
Posted on Dec 19, 2012
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AP/Ivan Sekretarev
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By Ivo Mijnssen — Russia is cracking down further on political dissent by requiring foreign humanitarian workers to register, more or less, as spies.
Posted on Dec 18, 2012
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Simon Gibbs (CC-BY-SA)
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Will Hutton, writing in The Observer, says the “precious freedom of speech of an individual is different from the freedom of speech of a media corporation with its capacity to manipulate the opinions of millions.”
Posted on Nov 25, 2012
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Flickr/funkypancake
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The city’s public officials have a simple message to residents and visitors: “Keep your clothes on!”
Posted on Nov 21, 2012
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AP/The American Freedom Defense Initiative, Pamela Geller
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By Scott Tucker — A woman begins covering a provocative subway station poster with spray paint. Another woman demands to know why she is defacing “an approved message,” and why she has “a right to violate free speech.” The woman replies that she is exercising her own free speech. That’s the short story. Have you already made up your mind about who is right and who is wrong?
Posted on Sep 28, 2012
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YouTube/DontBendOverForAllah
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Mona Eltahawy, a prominent Egyptian-American activist and writer whose arms were broken in Tahrir Square during the Arab Spring, was arrested at a Times Square subway station after spraying paint over a controversial poster that has drawn broad condemnation for equating Muslims with “savages.”
Posted on Sep 26, 2012
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Photo illustration from an image by Colin Grey (CC-BY)
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Last time on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: unconventional recruiting in the military, balancing free speech with cultural sensitivity in the Middle East, how to survive a plague and Robert Scheer on the freeloaders whose votes Mitt Romney is apparently not expecting.
Posted on Sep 24, 2012
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Last time on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: unconventional recruiting in the military, balancing free speech with cultural sensitivity in the Middle East, how to survive a plague and Robert Scheer on the freeloaders whose votes Mitt Romney is apparently not expecting.
Posted on Sep 24, 2012
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AP/John Minchillo
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By Chris Hedges — In January I sued President Barack Obama for authorizing the military to detain U.S. citizens indefinitely. U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest, in short, just declared the law unconstitutional.
Posted on Sep 17, 2012
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Photo by David Shankbone (CC-BY)
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Noting in a New York Times Op-Ed that much of their work has made “the case that the news media in the United States often fail to inform Americans about the uglier actions of our own government,” filmmakers Michael Moore and Oliver Stone argue that transferring WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to U.S. custody would be disastrous for free speech everywhere.
Posted on Aug 21, 2012
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AP/Alex Katz
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By Ivo Mijnssen — The Pussy Riot case has become an international PR disaster for the Russian government, but domestically Russia’s conservative majority is rallying behind Vladimir Putin.
Posted on Aug 20, 2012
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Furryscaly (CC BY-SA 2.0)
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By Alexander Reed Kelly — Nicholas Merrill is tired of waiting for Congress to protect Americans’ privacy online. So he plans to force the matter by changing the way telecommunication companies do business.
Posted on Jul 24, 2012
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According to Bill Moyers, the Supreme Court’s recent decision not to revisit the controversial Citizens United ruling shows that the case was never about free speech. Instead, he argues, the Citizens United decision was just a hoax (albeit a really big one).
Posted on Jul 9, 2012
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(CC-BY-SA)
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The State Department is once again giving China a hard time about its human rights record, a worthy cause to be sure, though the United States makes for an odd champion. What’s the saying? Those who torture should not throw stones, maybe.
Posted on Jun 3, 2012
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Illustration by Mr. Fish
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By Chris Hedges — Another Muslim activist has gone to prison as a result of the government’s criminalization of what people say and believe.
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These may be the first elections in which class will carry more weight than race; the “right to be forgotten” threatens freedom of speech on the Internet; meanwhile, some smartphone voice recognition software is racist and sexist. These discoveries and more after the jump.
Posted on Feb 14, 2012
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Our civil liberties and First Amendment rights are threatened by the Supreme Court’s decisions in the Julian Assange case; if Mitt Romney’s father was still around, he’d probably endorse Obama; meanwhile, Fox News is ruining the GOP. These discoveries and more after the jump.
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Sony Pictures
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India may be the world’s biggest democracy, but it has a little something to learn about free expression. Film censors have banned the Hollywood version of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” because of three sexual and/or violent scenes.
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Joseph Voves (CC-BY)
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By Peter Van Buren —
Morris Davis was fired by the Library of Congress not because of his work performance, but because he wrote a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed on his own time, using his own computer, as a private citizen. The government just did not like what he wrote.
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Screen grab from Twitter
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Emma Sullivan, 18, says she will not write an apology to Sam Brownback after telling her roughly 65 followers on Twitter that the Kansas governor sucks. Sullivan has gained thousands of additional followers since her high school principal ordered her to apologize to Brownback.
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© Jeff Pappas
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Some of the nation’s most prestigious news organizations, including AP and The New York Times, are condemning New York City’s treatment of the media, writing in a letter that “police actions of last week have been more hostile ...” (more)
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Timothy Krause (CC-BY)
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By Bill Blum — Those who believe the courts will come to the rescue have bought into the popular mythology surrounding the amendment’s depth and reach.
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Democracy Now!
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Amy Goodman and two former “Democracy Now!” producers have won a $100,000 settlement three years after police stormtroopers surrounding the GOP convention in St. Paul, Minn., battered, bloodied and arrested the journalists. (more)
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Photo illustration from an image by Colin Grey
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This week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: Juan Cole reports from New York on Occupy Wall Street and Palestinians at the U.N. Also: The politics of immigration; women make less than men (still), and a jury convicts the Irvine 11.
Posted on Sep 29, 2011
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This week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: Juan Cole reports from New York on Occupy Wall Street and Palestinians at the U.N. Also: The politics of immigration; women still earn less than men, and a jury convicts the Irvine 11. Pictured above, Nawaf Salam, Lebanon’s ambassador to the U.N.
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Flickr / Varin Tsai (CC-BY)
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Ten Muslim students from UC Irvine who heckled Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren during an on-campus appearance last year were found guilty Friday of two misdemeanors to conspire and to disrupt the speech, despite their arguments citing free speech.
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Al-Jazeera English (CC-BY-ND)
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Egyptian police raided the Cairo offices of the news network Al-Jazeera on Sunday in what is being interpreted by some of Egypt’s revolutionaries as a crackdown on free expression and a continuation of some of the autocratic practices of the regime of ousted dictator Hosni Mubarak. (more)
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Beatrice Murch (CC-BY-SA)
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By Amy Goodman — What does the police killing of a homeless man in San Francisco have to do with the Arab Spring uprisings from Tunisia to Syria? The attempt to suppress the protests that followed.
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Flickr / JacobRuff (CC-BY)
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The Federal Communications Commission said Monday that it will investigate San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit because of its decision to interrupt cellphone service on Aug. 11 before a protest planned for that day. The interruption lasted three hours.
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By Derek Lazzaro — A warrant is out on Mrfuddlesticks. Apparently the cops in Renton, Wash., can’t take a joke, and that has put a constitutional right in jeopardy.
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Flickr / DonkeyHotey
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For years, the conservative wing of the Supreme Court has flapped mightily in the face of any attempt to deny American corporations their ability to disenfranchise and dispossess the American public. (more)
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AP / Jim Urquhart
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In his book “Civil Disobedience,” Henry David Thoreau wrote: “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.” And prison is where a federal judge has put Tim DeChristopher, 29, after he posed in 2008 as a winning bidder ... (more)
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AP / Paul Sakuma
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By Robert Scheer — Scalia’s opinion is actually quite thrilling in enunciating an extremely broad definition of the free speech rights of minors. But it is simply bizarre in dismissing the claimed harmful effects of violent depictions while still insisting on the strictest puritanical view of the dangers of sexual imagery.
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AP / Irwin Fedriansyah
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We’ve been tracking the fate of Erwin Arnada since 2006, when the editor launched a PG version of Playboy in the world’s most populous Muslim country. After all these years, the Indonesian high court has invalidated the indecency charges on which Arnada was convicted. It’s a big day for swimsuits in Bali.
Posted on Jun 23, 2011
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Photo illustration from an image by Colin Grey
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This week on Truthdig Radio in collaboration with KPFK: Kids have a right to mock their teachers; Apple may be launching a preemptive strike against free speech; and the general’s son, Miko Peled, says Israelis and Palestinians must accept a one-state solution. Also, Tim DeChristopher, the hero who didn’t stand a chance.
Posted on Jun 22, 2011
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This week on Truthdig Radio in collaboration with KPFK: Kids have a right to mock their teachers; Apple may be launching a preemptive strike against free speech; and the general’s son, Miko Peled, says Israelis and Palestinians must accept a one-state solution. Also, Tim DeChristopher, the hero who didn’t stand a chance. Update: Full transcript.
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AP / Ng Han Guan
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It took two months and not-so-subtle protests from within and beyond the art world, but on Wednesday the Chinese government freed 54-year-old artist Ai Weiwei from prison, hinting at tax issues and not artistic dissent as the reason behind his stint in lockup.
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Mr. Fish
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By Chris Hedges — The draconian legal mechanisms that condemn Muslim Americans who speak out publicly about the outrages we commit in the Middle East have left many wasting away in supermax prisons.
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Parliamentary official John Hemming has drawn attention to a new type of court order forbidding members of Britain’s fourth estate to cover cases deemed too sensitive for public consideration. The order, known as a super-injunction ... (more)
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AP / Bret Hartman
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By Bill Boyarsky — Is rudeness a crime, punishable by prison? Yes, says a district attorney as he pursues the prosecution of 11 Muslim students who disrupted a speech by the Israeli ambassador.
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The WikiLeaks founder dishes to Steve Kroft, who tells Assange “you are screwing with the forces of nature.” For his part, Assange insists that whatever his problems with the United States, he shares values of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.
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Flickr / Mad Mike 3000
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By Barry Lando — There are limits to the virtues of free expression in a nation where semiautomatic pistols can be obtained by near-lunatics, including those who believe that their mission is to save the United States or mankind from the forces of darkness.
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The author who gained national attention last month by selling his self-published “Pedophile’s Guide to Love & Pleasure” on Amazon has been arrested on obscenity charges. Authorities are concerned that the book advocates illegal behavior, a familiar challenge to free speech protections.
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By Eugene Robinson — Do we want the people who run Amazon, PayPal, Facebook, Twitter or perhaps even—shudder—Microsoft, Apple or Google making political decisions on our behalf?
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Gizmodo
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In addition to selling books, Amazon does a nice side business hosting websites. WikiLeaks was paying for space on Amazon servers this week until the retailer sent the leakers packing. No comment so far from Amazon, but WikiLeaks, now hosted in Sweden, responded with a dig about “the land of the free.”
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