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Freedom of Speech

British Journalist Sami Hamdi Recounts ICE Detention

November 19, 2025 Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter. , , , , ,
British journalist Sami Hamdi, who was recently released from ICE detention in the United States, recounted what he experienced during an online discussion organized by the Freedom of the Press Foundation. Hamdi had a valid visa and a ticket for a domestic flight to Tampa, Florida, where he was scheduled to speak at a banquet for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Yet as a result of pressure from anti-Muslim activists Laura Boomer and Amy Mek, the State Department revoked his visa, and he was held in confinement for around 18 days. On October 26, the Department of Homeland Security took him into custody at the San Francisco International Airport. His detention and removal was in retaliation for his speech in support of Palestinian human rights and against the Israeli government’s genocide in Gaza.

Another Mass Protest Against Palestine Action Ban Needs 1,000 People

August 14, 2025 The Canary. , , , , ,
Protesters are gearing up for the next mass ‘Lift The Ban’ demonstration against the Labour Party government’s proscription of Palestine Action – this time, on Saturday 6 September. It’s calling for people to sign up to swamp the Metropolitan Police – and cause maximum embarrassment for the Labour’s bare-faced liar of a home secretary Yvette Cooper. The action aims to push the government to finally ditch the preposterous ban on the non-violent direct action group. Following the Met’s sweep of arrests Saturday 9 August, Defend Our Juries plan to stand up again to the government’s unprecedented proscription of non-violent direct action group Palestine Action.

Abolishing The First Amendment

July 29, 2025 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. , , , , ,
I testified at the New Jersey state capital in Trenton last week against Bill A3558, which would adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which conflates anti-Zionism with antisemitism. “This is a dangerous assault on free speech by seeking to criminalize legitimate criticism of Israeli policies,” I said. “The Trump administration’s campaign to ostensibly root out antisemitism on college campuses is clearly a trope to shut down free speech and deport non-citizens, even if they are here legally. This bill falsely conflates ethnicity with a political state.

Free Speech Ends Here: What I Saw During The LAPD Crackdown

June 12, 2025 Jalyssa Dugrot, MintPress News. , , , , , ,
On the morning of June 10, 2025, I made the decision to travel to Los Angeles to cover the underreported protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). By night, I was already en route to the airport. For days, the world watched as California burned. Cars set ablaze, crowds being flash-banged, rubber bullets flying, smoke in the air as protesters and reporters run for cover, gasping for air and hurrying to put their masks on. The scenes on the ground gripped us all. Just as striking were the headlines: “RIOTERS BURN LA,” “VIOLENT PROTESTERS IN LA,” and it made me wonder, when did free speech become synonymous with violence?

Universities Continue To Retaliate Against Staff For Gaza Protests

December 11, 2024 Claudia Gohn, Mondoweiss. , , , , , , ,
Clara C. began working at Columbia University one month after the start of the genocide in Gaza in October 2023. She was hired in the Germanic Languages Department as a Department Assistant. Like many incoming members of the Columbia community, she had high hopes for her time at the university. Seven months later, the illusion of Ivy League ambition and a rich intellectual environment vanished when she was suspended from her post, ostensibly because of her involvement in the Gaza Solidarity Encampment. By early summer, she was terminated.

Students Who Protested Gaza Genocide Face Felony Mob Charges

November 26, 2024 Tara Goodarzi, Truthout. , , , , , ,
Pre-trial hearings for students who participated in a Gaza solidarity encampment in central Illinois last spring are being held on November 20 and December 4, 2024. The outcome of the four students’ trials will determine whether they will risk up to three years of incarceration on felony “mob action” charges for having exercised their free speech rights on campus. The students from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) — one of the largest public universities in the country — constructed an encampment known as the Popular University for Gaza in April 2024, after months of Israel’s relentless slaughter of Palestinians, mirroring dozens of other student-led sites across the United States.

University Of Pennsylvania Police Raid Pro-Palestine Students’ Home

October 27, 2024 Penn Students Against the Occupation of Palestine, Popular Resistance. , , , , , , ,
On Friday, October 18 at 6 am, 12 Penn Police officers and one Philadelphia Police officer raided the home of pro-Palestine Penn students organizers. After threatening to break down the door with a battering ram and pointing a gun at their neighbor, they stormed the house in full tactical gear. The police banged on each door as students were sleeping, pointing rifles and handguns at their heads as they exited their rooms with their hands raised. Officers refused to show a warrant to residents of the house, and refused to provide their names and badge numbers. While the students were corralled by police in a room, one student was separated and taken in for questioning.

The Empire Finds An African Enemy: African Stream In The Crosshairs

September 26, 2024 David Hundeyin, Black Agenda Report. , , , , , ,
On Friday, September 13, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken addressed a press briefing in Washington DC, as he has done many times before. The purpose of the briefing was to announce new measures to counter “Russian propaganda,” a pronouncement that was not out of the ordinary. The US has placed nearly 6,000 sanctions on Russia over the years, making a press briefing to announce the State Department’s latest Russian sanctions a normal and prosaic event. That is, until Blinken got to the main point of his briefing: Last week, our government revealed how RT launders information operations through unwitting Americans to covertly disseminate Kremlin-produced content and messaging to the American public. Today, we’re exposing how Russia deploys similar tactics around the world.

Pavel Durov And The Abuse Of Law

August 30, 2024 Craig Murray, Consortium News. , , ,
The detention of Pavel Durov is being portrayed as a result of the EU Digital Services Act. But having spent my day reading the EU Services Act (a task I would not wish upon my worst enemy), it does not appear to me to say what it is being portrayed as saying. EU Acts are horribly dense and complex, and are published as “Regulations” and “Articles.” Both cover precisely the same ground, but for purposes of enforcement the more detailed “Regulations” are the more important, and those are referred to below. The “Articles” are entirely consistent with this. Durov was formally charged on Wednesday and prevented from leaving France.

France Arrests Telegram Founder Pavel Durov, Denies Russian Consular Access

August 26, 2024 Orinoco Tribune. , , , , ,
The Russian founder of the messaging app Telegram, Pavel Durov, has been arrested in France just after he arrived in Paris on a private jet on Saturday. Durov, who obtained French citizenship in 2021, was arrested at Paris-Le Bourget Airport at around 8pm local time on Saturday, August 24. He is also a citizen of the UAE, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and his native Russia. His jet had arrived in the French capital from Azerbaijan. The 39-year-old tech entrepreneur was accompanied by a woman and his bodyguard, according to a report by the French news outlet LCI. According to the report, the French authorities issued an arrest warrant for the tech entrepreneur as part of a preliminary investigation.

Did Columbia University Violate The First Amendment?

April 29, 2024 Sam Husseini, Consortium News. , , , , , , ,
Defending Rights & Dissent, a non-profit advocacy group, in their recent letter to Columbia President Minouche Shafik (which has lots of good information) stated: Although Columbia University is a private institution not governed by the First Amendment, the role of state actors — in this case members of Congress — in instigating the action would raise serious First Amendment concerns. This might seem odd to people. Many people think that private groups can disregard the First Amendment, which only limits government action. However, Defending Rights & Dissent is perfectly correct in noting this case may be different.

McCarthyist Attack On Gaza Protests Threatens Free Thought For All

April 21, 2024 Ari Paul, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. , , , , ,
With the encouragement of the state, universities from coast to coast are taking draconian steps to silence debate about US-backed violence in the Middle East. The Columbia University community looked on in shock as cops in riot gear arrested at least 100 pro-Palestine protesters who had set up an encampment in the center of campus (New York Post, 4/18/24). The university’s president, Nemat Shafik, had just the day before testified before a Republican-dominated congressional committee ostensibly concerned with campus “antisemitism”—a label that has come to be misapplied to any criticism of Israel, though the critics so smeared are often themselves Jewish.

The ‘Disinformation Industry’ Lands In Court

July 16, 2023 Patrick Lawrence, Scheer Post. , , , , , ,
What kind of a week was last week in the theater of war wherein battles rage over illegal censorship, illegal attacks on freedom of speech, illegal government infringements on our constitutional rights, and, amid it all, the complicity of our most powerful media in these illegalities? For a brief while it looked as though it was a very fine week. On July 4, an excellent day for this, a district court in Louisiana ruled that the White House and a long list of other federal agencies are barred from all contacts with social media companies if the intent is to intimidate or otherwise coerce Twitter, Google, Facebook, and other such platforms into deleting, suppressing, or in any way obscuring content protected as free speech, to paraphrase a key passage in the ruling.

US Court Victory Against Online Censorship

July 5, 2023 Joe Lauria, Consortium News. , , , , , , ,
A judge in Louisiana has barred the F.B.I. and other government agencies from asking social media companies to suppress free speech, reports Joe Lauria. A U.S. federal judge on Tuesday issued a temporary injunction against a number of government agencies preventing them from talking to social media firms for “the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.” Judge Terry Doughty of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana ruled that the agencies couldn’t identify specific social media posts to be taken down or ask for reports about the social media company’s efforts to do so.

Conflict As A Tension To Steer By

January 3, 2023 Hope Wilder, Grassroots Economic Organizing. , , ,
The unwritten rules in many groups are clear: Be nice, avoid conflict at all costs and, if a conflict arises, see it as a “personal problem” of one perhaps problematic individual. In sociocracy, we have the opportunity to see things differently. A conflict or individual’s strong feelings can point out something the rest of us aren’t seeing, which could be important to the organization as a whole. Perhaps an activity of the group is conflicting with the group’s values or aims. Perhaps a policy is not clear, and the lack of clarity is creating a conflict. Listening to this tension and identifying the underlying needs can lead to a more effective organization that functions better. We can actually use the tension inherent in conflict as a way to steer governance.
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