We should have seen this coming. I believe it is going to get worse before it gets better, if ever. At some point there is going to be a “pitchforks and torches” backlash.
It may be starting in Ferguson, MO. Take a look at one of the latest stories to come out of there. It’s sad that we have to look overseas to get reliable and up to date news about what is happening in the good ol’ US of A. Because of the great sucking sound that is the US corporate mainstream media, people who want to get a more balanced read on the news check sites such as Al Jazerra, The Guardian, RT, The Epoch Times, and Der Spiegel.
U.S. District Court Judge James Parker of the New Mexico District ruled a monument displaying the Ten Commandments must be removed from the Bloomfield, New Mexico City Hall.
A lawsuit was filed in the district on behalf of two members of the Wicca Religion by the American Civil Liberties Union against the city. Judge Parker’s ruling stated the city had violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to United States Constitution.
There is a controversy at the University of Illinois over the right of faculty to express views on social media outside of their positions. Steven Salaita had already been offered a tenured position in the American Indian studies program on the Champaign-Urbana campus and was just waiting for approval by the university’s Board of Trustees, usually a perfunctory stage. However, Salaita posted strongly anti-Israeli sentiments after the start of the recent war in Gaza. After those postings, he was informed that the university was rescinding its offer due to opposition on the board.
We recently discussed the controversy surrounding a confrontation between Thrin Short, 16, and her sister Joan, 21, and Feminist Studies Associate Professor Mireille Miller-Young. Miller-Young was then charged with criminal conduct including Theft of Person; Battery; and Vandalism. While initially pleading not guilty, Miller-Young has now entered a no contest plea to charges to the three misdemeanors. Despite the videotape of the incident and violation of both criminal law and presumably university regulations, Miller-Young remains employed at the university.
There is a disturbing story how this week concerning the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and specifically Commissioner Michael Yaki, a Democratic appointee who was a former senior adviser to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Yaki spoke on sexual harassment law in education, a subject on which I have previously written to express my concerns over the loss of due process rights for accused students. Yaki’s comments however seem to threaten core free speech principles as he laid out his view of the need to curtail harmful speech. Yaki spoke of the need to outlaw unpopular or what he considers degrading speech because college students are too impressionable.
Warning: the image above may get you sued by the New York Port Authority. We have long discussed the insane evolution of trademark and copyright laws. Now, Fishs Eddy, a housewares store in Manhattan, has been hit with a cease-and-desist letter from the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) over dishes that merely show the skyline of the city. The MTA claims that the common silhouette of the city includes some of its “assets” and that the store must destroy all of its products with the images and promise never again to sell images of the skyline. It is reminiscent of the English decision finding that taking photographs of London icons are also violations. Here the authority is claiming ownership to skyline images and 9-11 images even in silhouette.
The Russian Parliament passed worrying laws that will certainly have a chilling effect on free speech in Russia. Now these laws are in effect and certainly prove to be useful to the government in stamping out dissent and non-sanctioned information.
BBC news reports bloggers with more than 3,000 daily readers must register with the mass media regulator, Roskomnadzor, and conform to the regulations that govern the country’s larger media outlets.
Internet companies will also be required to allow Russian authorities access to users’ information.
The nation’s top constitutional court invalidated the Uganda’s highly controversial anti-homosexuality law, citing improper parliamentary procedures. The opinion cites that the Speaker of the House acted illegally when she allowed the original bill to be voted for passage by MPs despite the lack of a quorum in the chamber. Afterward, President Museveni signed the legislation into law.
Activists held the decision as a significant victory in for civil rights in Uganda, but will this be only a temporary legal reprieve?
In Pakistan, a Muslim mob has killed a seven-year-old girl and her baby sister (as well as their grandmother) in the latest carnage to defend the faith from blasphemy. The cause of the outrage was a simple picture posted on Facebook that was deemed offensive to Islam. The mob accused members of the Ahmadi sect, who live under continual discrimination by the Pakistani government and the threat of death from Muslims over their faith.
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw)-Weekend Contributor
Since the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence voted in April of this year to declassify its long-awaited Torture Report, the intelligence agencies have been working behind the scenes to convince the Executive Branch to further sanitize it or keep it entirely secret. Needless to say, the declassification process used to prepare the report for public consumption has been dragging on. With the CIA and other defense agencies working overtime to keep a lid on the report, the truth may never reach the public.
California lawyer Daniel Bornstein is controversial for his work on behalf of landlords and the use of eviction laws in San Francisco. It was not entirely unexpected therefore when protesters suddenly appeared at a 2014 seminar on eviction law. I have always opposed such protests that seek to prevent others from hearing the views of speakers or teachers. I can understand therefore why Bornstein was upset. However, he has been accused by an activist of taking the step of filing a copyright infringement claim with YouTube to get the company to pull a video of the incident below. It is not clear if the video below is the same video or whether some material has been removed from the original. Continue reading “Copyright Infringement or YouTube Harassment? California Lawyer Succeeds (Temporarily) In Pulling Protest Video From YouTube”→
A controversy developed in Moses Lake, Washington over a Fourth Congressional Candidate’s and his supporters’ placement of campaign signs on city owned property and rights of way in the city.
House hopeful Gavin Seim declined to agree to a required use permit in placement of his campaign signs calling the permitting and removal of his signs a violation of his free speech and his right to participate in government.
Moses Lake City Manager Joe Gavinski claims the policy somehow protects the public. The city’s government permits six campaign free speech zones within its jurisdiction.
We previously reported of an outrageous lawsuit by the owners of the Il Giardino Restaurant in Cap Ferret, France who sued a blogger critical of the dining experience, HERE. Essentially Caroline Doudet was sued by the restaurant’s owners because her allegedly disparaging blog post ranked highly on Google searches for the restaurant–fourth in a Google search return the lawsuit claimed. The title of her critique was in the English, “The place to avoid in Cap Ferret, Il Giardino” and was the cause leading to the lawsuit, according to paperwork filed.
“I was really stunned and disgusted, and of course I will worry now [whenever I] write a negative review,” Doudet said of the effect of the case in an e-mail to Wired.co.uk. “I regret the article, because it’s so much noise for nothing.”
Nevertheless a French Court handed down an emergency ruling blocking the article’s title and awarding Il Giardino €2,500 in fines and court costs.
The restaurant’s owners claimed the title defamed them, causing great damage to a business they worked fifteen years, seven days a week to build and the Google ranking was causing them increasing harm. But in what became a new definition of “Damage Award” the internet came alive and rendered a harsh judgment in its court of appeals. Fame became infâme. And the repercussions were magnifique.
For years, we have lamented the wholesale attack on free speech in France from ever-expanding hate speech ruling to stripping away anonymity on the Internet to censorship of expression to criminalizing historical claims (though the last move was later reversed). The erosion of such protection has never been so evident as with the ruling against blogger Caroline Doudet. A French judge has issued an emergency ruling forcing that one of the titles of a blog restaurant critique be changed to reduce its prominence on Google and for Doudet to pay damages. It is an absurd ruling and frightening in its implications for free speech. France appears to have dived headlong into speech regulation and censorship.
In Kano, Nigeria, 55 people have been arrested and convicted for alcohol consumption in violation of Sharia law. Making the violation more serious in the view of the Sharia “judges” is the fact that they were drinking during Ramadan. They received four months in prison for failing to live up to the religious demands of their government.
It may be starting in Ferguson, MO. Take a look at one of the latest stories to come out of there. It’s sad that we have to look overseas to get reliable and up to date news about what is happening in the good ol’ US of A. Because of the great sucking sound that is the US corporate mainstream media, people who want to get a more balanced read on the news check sites such as Al Jazerra, The Guardian, RT, The Epoch Times, and Der Spiegel.
