Category: Free Speech

Bizarre, Constitutional Law, Criminal law, Free Speech, Media, Society

Florida Judge Issues Shocking Order For Newspaper To “Unpublish” News Story

The_Palm_Beach_Post_front_pageCircuit Judge Jack Schramm Cox has made a rather ignoble entry into national news with a clearly unconstitutional order to the Palm Beach Post to unpublish material from its website. The act of prior restraint violates core first amendment protections and will achieve nothing since the information was part of a public filing. The utter lack of legal judgment (and knowledge) shown by Cox in this order is deeply troubling.

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Bizarre, Criminal law, Free Speech, International, Media, Politics

“We Swears To Serve The Master”: Turkish Court Orders Investigation Into Whether a Comparison of Erdoğan to Gollum Is Insulting And Thus Criminal

220px-Gollum220px-Recep_Tayyip_ErdoganLike most of the world, we have watched the rapid decline of civil liberties in Turkey after the election of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his coalition of Islamic parties. Just last month, we discussed the arrest of Mehmet Emin Altunses, 16, who allegedly committed the crime of “insulting” Erdoğan. calling people who use birth control “traitors” and saying Muslims discovered America, you are not allowed to be disrespectful or insulting in discussing Erdoğan. Then there was the prosecution of model and former Miss Turkey Merve Buyuksarac, 26, for criticizing Erdogan for quoting a few lines from a poem called the “Master’s Poem” from weekly Turkish satirical magazine Uykusuz. Erdogan’s totalitarian measures have earned him the nickname “Buyuk Usta” (the Big Master). The fact is that censorship and repressions is that it tends to become increasing absurd as leaders try to punish those who would insult them or question their leadership. This week is another case in point for Erdoğan. His government is investigating physician Dr. Bilgin Çiftçi for allegedly insulting Erdoğan after sharing a meme comparing Erdoğan’s facial expressions to the Gollum character in the “The Lord of the Rings” movies. Now here is the truly wonderful part: a court has reportedly demanded an expert examination by two experts to determine if a comparison to Gollum’s character would be an insult.

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Bizarre, Constitutional Law, Criminal law, Free Speech, International, Media, Politics, Religion

Muslims in India Launch Violent Protests and Call For Arrests Over “Blasphemous Picture” In Newspaper . . . of a Piggy Bank

piggy-bank-isis We have often discussed the various protests, often violent, in Islamic countries over alleged blasphemous statements or images. These usually involve depictions of Mohammad or religious symbols. In Mumbai, however, Muslim protesters found a new blasphemous symbol: the use of a piggy bank to show where ISIS gets its money to conduct worldwide terror campaigns. This is a standard illustration of a “piggy bank” to show the savings of a group or person. Yet, some took this from a different perspective.

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Bizarre, Congress, Criminal law, Free Speech, International, Society, Uncategorized

Beauty Remains In The Eye Of The Beholder As China Prevents Canada’s Miss World From Traveling To Finals

Anastasia_LinThis week, China has once again shown the world that there is nothing quite so ugly as its ongoing struggle to bar basic rights and freedoms to its people.  The authoritarian government’s effort took a particularly bizarre turn when it reportedly stopped Canada’s China-born Miss World, Anastasia Lin, 25,  from boarding a flight to the beauty pageant finals in China.  Lin is a member of the repressed Falun Gong movement and just testified in Congress on Chinese repression in July.

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Bizarre, Constitutional Law, Criminal law, Free Speech, International, Politics, Society

Russia Moves To Shoot Down Turkish History: New Legislation Would Make Denial Of Armenian Genocide A Crime

260px-MarcharmeniansThe Russians appear to be moving in the aftermath of Turkey shooting down one of its fighters: it has targeted Turkish history in a new and abusive criminal law. Russian lawmaker Sergei Mironov said that his Just Russia party has proposed a bill that criminalizes the denial that the 1915 killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turkish forces was a “genocide.” I previously wrote about a similar law passed in France as not just a denial of free speech but academic freedom. The law was later struck down. The Russians are moving just weeks after the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Switzerland also violation freedom of speech for its criminalization of the denial of the killings of Armenians as genocide.

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Academia, Bizarre, Constitutional Law, Free Speech, Media, Politics, Society

Massachusetts Cheerleader Tweets A Criticism Of Illegal Immigration And School Responds By Banning Her From Her Team

2ECD3FC200000578-3333566-image-m-25_1448461305506We have been discussing the rapid erosion of free speech on our campuses. That trend started a long time ago in our high schools where officials have steadily attacked the exercise of free speech by teenagers. Few however have reached the level of censorship and content-based punishment as Revere High School in Massachusetts. Cheerleader Caley Godino has been banned from her team because she tweeted political comments that her teachers did not like about illegal immigration.

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Academia, Animals, Bizarre, Criminal law, Free Speech, Media, Politics, Society

Former Indian Chief Justice Causes Near Riot At Academic Conference For Noting That 95% of Beef Traders Are Hindi

Screen Shot 2015-11-24 at 7.21.35 PMAs we have discussed, there seems to be a rising level of intolerance in academia and campuses for opposing views. A recent international conference showed this intolerance in the response to former Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court Justice Rajinder Sachar in his speech on “Radical Islamism.” In an effort to address stereotypes and intolerance shown Muslims, Sachar noted that 95 per cent of beef traders in India are Hindi. The reaction was an immediate walk out with some academics demanding that Justice Sachar not be allowed to continue and turning off the lights and fans.

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Academia, Bizarre, Free Speech

University of Ottawa Students Pull The Mat On Yoga Classes As “Cultural Appropriation”

Uottawacoa.svgUstrasana_-_Camel_PoseI have been writing a great deal about my concern over the erosion of free speech on our campuses. Part of the problem is that I sometimes have a difficult time even understanding the objection to some forms of speech or association as in the ever-widening range of things deemed “micro aggressions.” The latest such example is out of the University of Ottawa where students have been told that popular yoga classed have been suspending out of concerns that they involve a form of “cultural appropriation.” Jennifer Scharf, who have been leading the free weekly yoga sessions for eight years, is understandably confused but Staff at the Centre for Students with Disabilities believe that “while yoga is a really great idea and accessible and great for students … there are cultural issues of implication involved in the practice.” Just for the record, the two horses on the university seal are not doing the “Lord of the Dance” yoga position.

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Free Speech, International, Politics, Society

Forty Percent of Millennials Favor Censorship of Offensive Speech By Government

Freedom_of_SpeechWe have long discussed the rapid decline of free speech protections in the West. I have long argued that the West appears to have fallen out of love with free speech, which is more often viewed as a rising scourge rather than a defining value in some countries. A recent poll of the Pew Research Center shows just how many people we have lost to those calling for greater censorship and criminalization of speech. It is not surprisingly more prevalent with younger age groups, though Democrats are almost twice as likely favor censorship that Republicans. The largest (and most alarming) group is the millennials — 40% of whom favor government censorship of speech offensive to minority groups.

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Academia, Constitutional Law, Criminal law, Free Speech, International, Lawyering, Media, Politics, Religion, Society

Saudi Arabia Sentences Poet To Death For Being An Atheist and Insulting The Country

1911We have long discussed our close alliance with Saudi Arabia despite that country’s denial of the most fundamental human rights for women, non-Muslims, journalists, and political dissidents. While the State Department continues to vaguely reference “reforms” in the Kingdom, the Saudi Sharia courts and religious police continue to generate shocking medieval cases where people are flogged or executed for exercising free thought or associations. The latest outrage is the death sentence given Ashraf Fayadh, a Palestinian poet and leading member of Saudi Arabia’s contemporary art scene. He has been sentenced to death for renouncing Islam, being an atheist (which he denies) and insulting Saudi Arabia. Many view his real offense as being his embarrassment of the infamous religious police (mutaween) in Abha after he posted a video of their lashing a man in public. As is often the case in the pseudo, “courts” of Saudi Arabia, he was denied counsel and any real opportunity to present a defense.

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Academia, Bizarre, Free Speech, Media, Politics, Society

Persona Non Grata: Princeton Agrees To Explore Removing Woodrow Wilson’s Image and Name In Agreement With Protesters

220px-Princeton_shield.svgThomas_Woodrow_Wilson,_Harris_&_Ewing_bw_photo_portrait,_1919Princeton University has agreed to explore the removal of the name and images of former U.S. President Woodrow Wilson from buildings and school programs under a deal signed with protesters who objected to Wilson’s support of segregation, which was legal at the time. This action occurs as Harvard Law students have demanded the dropping of the school seal due to a connection to a slaveholder.

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Academia, Bizarre, Constitutional Law, Criminal law, Free Speech, Media, Politics, Society

Harvard Law Students Demand University Drop University Seal Due To Connection To Slaveowner

Harvard-seal-3Harvard Law students have started a campaign to drop the historic seal of Harvard because it is tied to an 18th-century slaveholder. The students organization, Royall Must Fall, have held campus demonstrations demanding the removal of the seal.  The three sheaves of wheat on the seal come from the Royall family crest (which raises the compromise possibility of just replacing that portion of the seal attributed to the Royall family).  Third-year law student Alexander Clayborne insists that the effort is part of “[o]ur larger goals include decolonization of the law school in general and decolonization of the law school curriculum.”

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Academia, Free Speech, Media, Politics, Society

Georgia Southern Student Fired From Job And Reportedly Disciplined By University After Criticism of Black Lives Matter Protests

EMILY_c0-133-640-506_s561x327Georgia_SouthernA student at Georgia Southern University has triggered a controversy that has led to her being fired from her job and charges that she has engaged in hate speech after criticizing protesters at the University of Missouri. Emily Faz, a senior, was critical of social media postings where Missouri protesters objected that the terrorist attacks in Paris were taken too much media attention away from their story.

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Academia, Free Speech, Politics, Society

Dartmouth Vice Provost Reportedly Apologizes Over Recent Library Protest . . . To The Protesters Accused Of Using Racial Epithets

Black-Lives-Matter-e1447691670939-300x197-300x197We recently discussed the allegations of a conservative college newspaper at Dartmouth that “Black Lives Matter” protesters burst into the Baker-Berry Library on the university’s campus in Hanover, New Hampshire and yelled racial epithets and prevented students from studying. The incident was partially caught on videotape and showed protesters abusing students. At the time, I questioned why the university seemed so silent and reticent about allegations of racist statements and even physical threats reported by other students. According to some reports, the university has now acted . . . to apologize to the students who burst into the library, prevented other students from studying, and allegedly yelled racial epithets.

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Criminal law, Free Speech, Society

Florida Appellate Court Strikes Order Barring Man From Criticizing Police Officer On The Internet

Unknown-1A Florida Appellate Court has ruled in favor of Patrick Neptune, a man who was barred under a clearly unconstitutional ruling from criticizing a local police officer on the Internet. Neptune accused Miramar Police Department Officer Philip Lanoue of first cutting him off in traffic and then following him home and giving him a ticket. After Lanoue sought a stalking injunction, a court issued an order including a bar on his criticizing the officer on the Internet.

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