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The First Amendment is Under Serious Assault in Order to Stifle Anti-Israel Boycotts

October 20, 2017

The First Amendment is Under Serious Assault in Order to Stifle Anti-Israel Boycotts

Assaults on freedom speech can be found in many aspects of American life these days, but one specific area that isn’t getting the attention it deserves relates to boycotts against Israel. Increasingly, we’re seeing various regional governments requiring citizens to agree to what essentially amounts to a loyalty pledge to a foreign government in order to participate in or receive government services.

I’m going to highlight two troubling examples of this, both covered by Israeli paper Haaretz. The first relates to Kansas.

From the article, In America, the Right to Boycott Israel Is Under Threat:

The First Amendment squarely protects the right to boycott. Lately, though, a legislative assault on that right has been spreading through the United States –  designed to stamp out constitutionally protected boycotts of Israel…

Over the past several years, state and federal legislatures have considered dozens of bills, and in some cases passed laws, in direct violation of this important ruling. These bills and laws vary in numerous respects, but they share a common goal of scaring people away people from participating in boycotts meant to protest Israeli government policies, including what are known as Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns.

Today, the ACLU filed a lawsuit challenging one of those laws — a Kansas statute requiring state contractors to sign a statement certifying that they do not boycott Israel, including boycotts of companies profiting off settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.

We are representing a veteran math teacher and trainer from Kansas who was told she would need to sign the certification statement in order to participate in a state program training other math teachers. Our client is a member of the Mennonite Church USA. 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Survey Find Americans’ Views on Free Speech is a Whole Bunch of Crazy

October 14, 2017


Survey Find Americans’ Views on Free Speech is a Whole Bunch of Crazy

The biggest thing this survey proves is that Orwellian double-speak is working.

If you are unfamiliar, doublespeak is a term from the novel 1984. It is speech intentionally meant to confuse, or obscure reality.

What does free speech mean? What is hate speech? And what laws currently or should exist in regards to speaking freely?

The answers from Americans prove just how successful the media and politicians have been in making Americans less grounded than a satellite.

The powers that be have successfully confused and obscured any hint of rationality in beliefs. There seems to be little method and all madness. People simply make up their minds emotionally, instead of thinking critically. And that is how those in power like it.

When people behave emotionally, they are more easy to control. A rational belief would be something along the lines of Evelyn Beatrice Hall’s “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.”

An irrational belief would be that anything that offends you should not be called free speech.

Those who believe the latter fail to understand that practically anything can be considered offensive to someone. Under those circumstances, politicians could limit any kind of critical speech, claiming it promotes violence, offends, or is hate speech.

Holding Two Contradictory beliefs

The survey found:

An overwhelming majority of Americans believe that “it would be hard to ban hate speech because people can’t agree what speech is hateful,” …

Yet a majority of Americans and a supermajority of African Americans believe that “society can prohibit hate speech and still protect free speech.” (To complicate matters, a quarter of Americans, 38 percent of African Americans, and 45 percent of Latinos erroneously believe it is already illegal to make a racist statement in public.)

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Death Of Free Speech Is Imminent: Government Begins Censorship Of Media Through Disingenuous Means

September 18, 2017

The Death Of Free Speech Is Imminent: Government Begins Censorship Of Media Through Disingenuous Means

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The death of free speech is imminent.  Anyone with access to a computer and the internet can see that the United States mainstream media is nothing more than a propaganda machine designed to brainwash the masses into a lemming-like agreement with the government.

And now, it’s oh-so-ironic that the same government that tells the media what to report on in order brainwash the public is seeking to quiet those who disagree and label them as “propaganda.”  Some may call it fake news, others just want a different opinion rather than the left-leaning media hysteria we are accustomed to.  But now,media outlet RT (Russia Today), founded in Russia will have to register with the United States as “foreign media;” which will forever give it the inaccurate title of “propaganda.”

This doesn’t apply to merely the Russian version of the news outlet, but the American-run and operated site as well. According to The Hill, in a report on Monday, RT did not name the company that the Department of Justice (DOJ) has compelled to file paperwork under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, but blasted the edict as overreaching.

“The war the US establishment wages with our journalists is dedicated to all the starry-eyed idealists who still believe in freedom of speech. Those who invented it, have buried it,” Margarita Simonyan, RT’s editor-in-chief, said about the registration.

Media organizations have been exempted from the law, which is wide-ranging in its disclosure requirements and generally applies to political consultants and those working in lobbying or public relations. It would be a felony if RT is found to have willfully failed to register as a foreign agent, however.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

The Strange (and Tortured) Legacy of “Free Speech”

September 5, 2017

The Strange (and Tortured) Legacy of “Free Speech”

Photo by Charlie Nguyen | CC BY 2.0

It has recently come to my attention that new Chancellor Carol Christ at the University of California, Berkeley, my alma mater, has unveiled ambitious plans for a “Free Speech Year” — a magnanimous gesture toward the Free Speech Movement (FSM) of 1964-65, an iconic moment in sixties radicalism.  Christ’s plans (essentially hopes) come at a time when a new cycle of right-wing speakers is slated for the fall, raising prospects of campus violence surpassing the chaos of February and May when Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter were scheduled to appear, then cancelled.  Those plans also come at a time of recurrent left-right street combat in Berkeley.

Christ announced that the university would sponsor “point-counterpoint” panels to demonstrate how strongly opposed political views can be exchanged in a peaceful, respectful setting.  Other events include workshops on constitutional issues, a revisiting of FSM history and its aftermath, discussions about how the FSM influenced the larger trajectory of American higher education, and so forth.    There is a special “Free Speech Week” set for September 24-27th.   A group called “Discover Berkeley”, headed by Boalt Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, will be touring California in October with its “Free Speech Now: the Berkeley Experience” program.  Its focus:  “how to ensure that disparate voices are heard.”

In something of an understatement, Christ lamented: “Now what public speech is about is shouting, screaming your point of view in a public space rather than really thoughtfully engaging someone with a different point of view.”    She neglected to mention those incidents where speech has been shut down entirely.    Whether a low-temperature intellectual milieu can be imagined, much less realized, in the age of Donald Trump, a resurgent conservatism, and escalating campus polarization is yet another matter.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How Social Media Stifles Free Speech

July 14, 2017

How Social Media Stifles Free Speech

  • Even more problematic is that those platforms are free to delete the pages and posts of users they deem to have violated whatever they decide are “community standards.” This includes judging content supportive of, for example, restricting migration in Europe.
  • Facebook, for example, also often permits real hate speech while banning websites that expose this hate speech.
  • Ultimately, the only way to keep the United States safe is by protecting its citizens’ ability to discuss ideas that without fear. If we lose our freedom of expression on the internet, we lose our democracy.

One of the greatest contemporary battles for individual liberty and freedom of the press is being conducted in cyber space.

Today, political, journalistic and corporate elites are in the process of trying to control, and even rewrite, “story lines” of history and current events with which they might disagree, and that they see slipping through their fingers.

It is a form of censorship akin to banning the printing press or preventing open debate in the literal and proverbial public square.

Facebook, for example, also often permits real hate speech while banning websites that expose this hate speech.

There are, however, constitutional and legal measures that can and should be taken to protect Americans from having their right to express themselves as they wish – without causing harm to public safety or engaging in illegal activity — violated every time they log in to their social media accounts.

New laws need to be codified to prevent what have become virtual utilities such as Facebook, Google, Twitter and YouTube from steering debate in a particular ideological direction.

One argument against holding these social media giants accountable is that they are private companies, and that consumers can simply stop using them.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Here’s How Facebook Decides What You Can And Can’t See

May 22, 2017

Here’s How Facebook Decides What You Can And Can’t See

One of Facebook’s overwhelmed content moderators – who reportedly sometimes have just 10 seconds to decide whether or not a piece of content is appropriate for the site’s immense user base or not – appears to have leaked a slideshow outlining the company’s complex rules for governing what Facebook’s 2 billion users can and cannot see to the Guardian.

The Guardian published the presentation in a series of slideshows divided into different topics: Sadism, violence, child abuse…

One of the slides outlining how the company handles depictions of graphic violence appeared with the following editor’s note:

“Some use language we would not usually publish, but to understand Facebook’s content policies, we decided to include it. See for yourself how Facebook’s polices what users post.”

It’s important to remember that Facebook’s moderators remove content “on report only,” meaning that millions of Facebook users could see a graphic image or video – such as a beheading – before it’s removed.

As one report notes, the guidelines “may also alarm free speech advocates concerned about Facebook’s de facto role as the world’s largest censor. Both sides are likely to demand greater transparency.”

Facebook employs about 4,500 “content moderators” but recently announced plans to hire another 3,000, the Guardian reported.

Here are some notable excerpts highlighted by the Guardian:

  • Remarks such as “Someone shoot Trump” should be deleted, because as a head of state he is in a protected category. But it can be permissible to say: “To snap a bitch’s neck, make sure to apply all your pressure to the middle of her throat”, or “fuck off and die” because they are not regarded as credible threats.
  • Videos of violent deaths, while marked as disturbing, do not always have to be deleted because they can help create awareness of issues such as mental illness.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

Prosecution of Assange is Persecution of Free Speech

April 25, 2017

Prosecution of Assange is Persecution of Free Speech

US authorities are reported to have prepared charges to seek the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. This overreach of US government toward a publisher, whose principle is aligned with the U.S. Constitution, is another sign of a crumbling façade of democracy. The Justice Department in the Obama administration could not prosecute WikiLeaks for publishing documents pertaining to the US government, because they struggled to determine whether the First Amendment protection applied in this case. Now, the torch of Obama’s war on whistleblowers seems to have been passed on to Trump, who had shown disdain toward free speech and even calledthe U.S. media as “enemies of the people”.

Earlier this month, CIA Director Mike Pompeo vowed to end WikiLeaks, accusing the whistleblowing site as being a “non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia”. He also once called Edward Snowden a traitor and claimed that he should be executed. This declaration of war against WikiLeaks may bring a reminiscence of George W. Bush’s speech in the aftermath of 9-11, where he said, ‘either you are with us or against us’, and urged the nation to side with the government in his call to fight global ‘war on terror’.

In a recent interview on DemocracyNow!, journalist at The Intercept, Glenn Greenwald put this persecution of WikiLeaks in the context of a government assault on basic freedom. He spelled out their tactics, noting how the government first chooses a target group that is hated and lacks popular support, for they know attacking an idea or a group that is popular would meet resistance. He explained:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

European Parliament Censors Its Own Free Speech

March 12, 2017

European Parliament Censors Its Own Free Speech

  • The rule strikes at the very center of free speech, namely that of elected politicians, which the European Court of Human Rights has deemed in its practice to be specially protected. Members of the European Parliament are people who have been elected to make the voices of their constituents heard inside the institutions of the European Union.
  • The rule can only have a chilling effect on free speech in the European Parliament, and will likely prove a convenient tool in trying to shut up those parliamentarians who do not follow the politically correct narrative of the EU.
  • By lifting Le Pen’s immunity while she is running for president of France, the European Parliament is sending the clear signal that publicizing the graphic and horrifying truth of the crimes of ISIS, rather than being received as a warning about what might soon be coming to Europe, instead ought to be punished.
  • Where does this clearly totalitarian impulse stop and who will stop it?

The European Parliament has introduced a new procedural rule, which allows for the chair of a debate to interrupt the live broadcasting of a speaking MEP “in the case of defamatory, racist or xenophobic language or behavior by a Member”. Furthermore, the President of the European Parliament may even “decide to delete from the audiovisual record of the proceedings those parts of a speech by a Member that contain defamatory, racist or xenophobic language”.

No one, however, has bothered to define what constitutes “defamatory, racist or xenophobic language or behavior”. This omission means that the chair of any debate in the European Parliament is free to decide, without any guidelines or objective criteria, whether the statements of MEPs are “defamatory, racist or xenophobic”. The penalty for offenders can apparently reach up to around 9,000 euros.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Obama Enters the Media Wars – Why His Recent Attack on Free Speech is So Dangerous and Radical

October 16, 2016

Obama Enters the Media Wars – Why His Recent Attack on Free Speech is So Dangerous and Radical

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Control of the news media is an instrumental, key feature to any totalitarian government. In contrast, the primary reason this experiment known as the United States has lasted so long under relatively free conditions is due to the preservation of free speech (and press) via the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

In case you haven’t read it in a while, here’s the text:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Nowhere in there do I see an exception for “conspiracy theories,” but apparently Constitutional scholar Barack Obama has an alternative interpretation.

As reported by AFP:

Pittsburgh (AFP) – President Barack Obama on Thursday decried America’s “wild, wild west” media environment for allowing conspiracy theorists a broad platform and destroying a common basis for debate.

Recalling past days when three television channels delivered fact-based news that most people trusted, Obama said democracy require citizens to be able to sift through lies and distortions.

“We are going to have to rebuild within this wild-wild-west-of-information flow some sort of curating function that people agree to,” Obama said at an innovation conference in Pittsburgh.

“There has to be, I think, some sort of way in which we can sort through information that passes some basic truthiness tests and those that we have to discard, because they just don’t have any basis in anything that’s actually happening in the world,”Obama added.

“That is hard to do, but I think it’s going to be necessary, it’s going to be possible,” he added.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Executive Director of the Kansas City Library System Issues Dire Free Speech Warning

October 4, 2016

Executive Director of the Kansas City Library System Issues Dire Free Speech Warning

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The following story hasn’t received the attention it deserves.

Back in May, a man was arrested by a private security guard and an off-duty police officer after asking pointed questions to American diplomat and author Dennis Ross during a library discussion. When a library employee attempted to intervene, he was also arrested.

ABC News reports:

The executive director the Kansas City library system says he is “outraged” that prosecutors continue to pursue charges against a man who was arrested after asking pointed questions during a library discussion about the Middle East peace process and an employee who tried to intervene.

Although the arrests occurred in May following a speech by author and diplomat Dennis Ross, the library system only recently went public about its opposition to charges, the Kansas City Star reported.

R. Crosby Kemper III, executive director of the city’s library system, said “we’re going to be living in a different kind of country” if people can be arrested for asking questions at a library. “If this kind of behavior is unacceptable to the police, then I guess we’re going to have to shut the library down.”

Issues arose after Ross finished speaking and took a question from Jeremy Rothe-Kushel concerning whether Jewish Americans like Rothe-Kushel should be concerned about actions by the U.S. and Israel that amount to “state-sponsored terrorism.”

“When are we going to stand up and be ethical Jews and Americans?” Rothe-Kushel asked.

When Rothe-Kushel tried to ask another question, a private security guard grasped his arm, followed by an off-duty police officer, both employed by the Jewish Community Foundation. Rothe-Kushel then shouted, “Get your hands off of me right now!”

Kemper said the private security guards had no right to remove a patron for asking a question.

Ross’ speech was the inaugural Truman and Israel Lecture, established by the Truman Library Institute and the Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Kansas City.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

New York State Senator Introduces Unconstitutional, Anti-Free Speech Legislation

June 18, 2016

New York State Senator Introduces Unconstitutional, Anti-Free Speech Legislation

Michael Krieger | Posted  at 11:57 am
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Perhaps the greatest irony of this past year has been the mind numbing and irrational anti-free speech wave that swept across facets of so-called “liberal” America.

This regressive movement was most readily apparent on college campuses, where hordes of sheltered and emotionally stunted students demanded restrictions on free speech in order to prevent themselves from being offended by an ever expanding list of unhappy thoughts and words. However, what is far more troubling, albeit much less public, are attempts by two fascist academic authoritarians, to convince the American citizenry to relinquish their First Amendment rights in the name of fighting ISIS. One of these men is a close advisor to President Obama.

– From last year’s post: Glenn Greenwald Confronts American “Liberals” Trying to Destroy Free Speech

It seems everywhere you turn, U.S. politicians at all levels of government are incessantly scheming to figure out ways to further erode the civil liberties of the American public. Earlier this month, a particularly egregious example emerged from the state of New York. It relates to an anti-First Amendment executive order issued by Governor Andrew Cuomo, followed one day later by similar legislation introduced by a state Senator. In case you aren’t up to speed on the issue, here’s a little background.

From The Huffington Post:

Over the past year, several attempts in the New York legislature to pass laws protecting Israel against the boycotts, divestment and sanctions collectively known as “BDS” have failed. BDS punishes Israel for its illegal occupation of Palestinian lands. In an unprecedented end run around the legislative process, Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued an executive order this month that would accomplish just what the legislature has refused to do.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

UN Plots War On Free Speech To Stop “Extremism” Online

May 16, 2016

UN Plots War On Free Speech To Stop “Extremism” Online

The United Nations Security Council wants a global “framework” for censoring the Internet, as well as for using government propaganda to “counter” what its apparatchiks call “online propaganda,” “hateful ideologies,” and “digital terrorism.” To that end, the UN Security Council this week ordered the UN “Counter-Terrorism Committee” — yes, that is a real bureaucracy — to draw up a plan by next year. From the Obama administration to the brutal Communist Chinese regime, everybody agreed that it was time for a UN-led crackdown on freedom of speech and thought online — all under the guise of fighting the transparently bogus terror war.

The UN, ridiculed by American critics as the “dictators club,” will reportedly be partnering with some of the world’s largest Internet and technology companies in the plot. Among the firms involved in the scheme is Microsoft, which, in a speech before the Security Council on May 11, called for “public-private partnerships” between Big Business and Big Government to battle online propaganda. As this magazine has documented, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and other top tech giants have all publicly embraced the UN and its agenda for humanity. Many of the more than 70 speakers also said it was past time to censor the Internet, with help from the “private sector.”

At the UN meeting this week, the 15 members of the UN Security Council, including some of the most extreme and violent dictatorships on the planet, claimed they wanted to stop extremism and violence from spreading on the Internet. In particular, the governments pretended as if the effort was aimed at Islamist terror groups such as ISIS and al-Qaeda, both of which have received crucial backing from leading members of the UN Security Council itself. Terrorism was not defined. Everybody agreed, though, that terror should not be associated with any particular religion, nationality, ethnicity, and so on, even though at least one delegation fingered the Israeli government.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Death of Free Speech: The West Veils Itself

April 27, 2016

The Death of Free Speech: The West Veils Itself

  • The West has capitulated on freedom of expression. Nobody in the West launched the motto “Je Suis Avijit Roy,” the name of the first of the several bloggers butchered, flogged or jailed last year for criticizing Islam.
  • Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, sided with the Turks. She condemned the German comedian’s poem, called it a “deliberate insult,” then approved the filing of criminal charges against him for insulting the Turkish president.
  • The West is veiling its freedom of speech in the confrontation with the Islamic world: this is the story of Salman Rushdie, of the Danish cartoons, of Theo van Gogh, of Charlie Hebdo.
  • Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, just released an interview with Italy’s largest newspaper, Il Corriere della Sera, where he suggested a kind of grand bargain: We Iranians will discuss with you our human rights situation, if you Europeans suppress freedom of expression on Islam.

Last week, Nazimuddin Samad sat at his computer at home and penned a few critical lines against the Islamist drift of his country, Bangladesh. The day after, Samad was approached by four men shouting “Allahu Akbar!” (“Allah is great!”) and hacked him to death with machetes.

These killings have become routine in Bangladesh, where many bloggers, journalists and publishers are being killed in broad daylight because of their criticism of Islam. There is a hit list with 84 names of “satanic bloggers.” A wave of terrorism against journalists reminiscent of that in Algeria, where 60 journalists were killed by Islamist armed groups between 1993 and 1997.

But these shocking killings have not been worth of a single line in Europe’s newspapers.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Germany Could Charge Comic for Insulting Turkey’s President

April 13, 2016

AMERICANS WONDERING WHAT life might be like in the near future — after a President Donald Trump acts on his promise to “open up our libels laws,” so that politicians with easily bruised egos can sue reporters or commentators for hurting their feelings — should pay attention to what is happening this week in Germany.

That’s because German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Tuesday that her government, while being fully committed to the principle of free speech, is considering a request from Turkey to file criminal charges against the host of a late-night television show on the state broadcaster, ZDF. His alleged crime? Joking about Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s thin skin by reading examples of actual slanderous statements about him, in the form of a poem.

The poem, performed last month by the German satirist Jan Böhmermann, was a carefully calibrated insult. The host began the sketch by telling viewers of his show, “Neo Magazin Royale,” that he would read aloud from a text called “Defamatory,” in order to demonstrate the difference between the sort of satirical insults of the notoriously prickly Erdogan that are permitted under German law and legally prohibited slander.

“What I’m about to read is not allowed. If it were to be read in public, that would be forbidden in Germany,” Böhmermann said, before launching nonetheless into a recitation of the full text, which describes Erdogan as a foul monster who has sex with goats and “watches child porn while kicking Kurds.”

As originally broadcast, the sketch included several interjections from Ralf Kabelka, Böhmermann’s sidekick, who interrupted to explain that under German law, certain sections of the poem were clearly not satire but defamation.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Story Line Dissolves

December 1, 2015

The Story Line Dissolves

Sometimes societies just go crazy. Japan, 1931, Germany, 1933. China, 1966. Spain 1483, France, 1793, Russia, 1917, Cambodia, 1975, Iran, 1979, Rwanda, 1994, Congo, 1996, to name some. By “crazy” I mean a time when anything goes, especially mass killing. The wheels came off the USA in 1861, and though the organized slaughter developed an overlay of romantic historical mythos — especially after Ken Burns converted it into a TV show — the civilized world to that time had hardly ever seen such an epic orgy of death-dealing.

I doubt that I’m I alone in worrying that America today is losing its collective mind. Our official relations with other countries seem perfectly designed to provoke chaos. The universities have melted into toxic sumps beyond even anti-intellectualism to a realm of hallucination. Demented gunmen mow down total strangers weekly in what looks like a growing competition to end their miserable lives with the highest victim score. The financial engineers have done everything possible to pervert and undermine the operations of markets. The political parties are committing suicide by cluelessness and corruption.

There is no narrative for our behavior toward Russia that makes sense anymore. Our campaign to destabilize Ukraine worked out nicely, didn’t it? And then we acted surprised when Russia reclaimed the traditionally Russian territory of Crimea, with its crucial warm-water naval ports. Who woulda thought? Then we attempted to antagonize them further with economic sanctions. The net effect is that Vladimir Putin ended up looking more rational and sane than any leader in the NATO coalition.

Lately, Russia has filled the vacuum of competence in Syria, cleaning up a mess that America left with its two-decade-long crusade to leave a train of broken governments everywhere in the region.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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