Freedom of Speech

Pavel Durov And The Abuse Of Law

August 30, 2024 Craig Murray, Consortium News. Educate! European Union (EU), Freedom of Speech, Pavel Durov, Telegram

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. Educate! France, Freedom of Speech, Israel, Pavel Durov, Russia, Telegram

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. Educate! 1st Amendment, Campus Movement, Columbia University, Freedom of Speech, Israel, Palestine, Repression, Student Activism

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. Educate! Censorship, Freedom of Speech, Gaza, McCarthyism, Right to Protest, Student Activism

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. Educate! Censorship, Disinformation, Freedom of Speech, Legal System, Media, Social Media, Surveillance

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. Resist! Censorship, FBI, Freedom of Speech, Legal System, Louisiana, Media, Social Media, Victory

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. Strategize! Conflict, Freedom of Speech, Participatory Democracy, Society

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.

FBI Cointelpro Is Back And Worse Than Ever

January 1, 2023 James Bovard, Counter Punch. Educate! Elon Musk, FBI, Freedom of Speech, Media

Elon Musk has opened the floodgates to expose the FBI’s latest war on Americans’ freedom of speech. The FBI massively intervened to pressure Twitter to suppress accounts and tweets from individuals the FBI disapproved, including parody accounts. The FBI and other federal agencies also browbeat Facebook, Instagram, and many other tech companies. Thus far, most of the American media has ignored or downplayed the story, known as the Twitter Files. Since many of the individuals who the FBI got squelched were pro-Trump, the violation of their rights is a non-issue – or a cause for quiet celebration. At this point, it is difficult to know whether the scant reaction to the Twitter Files is the result of political bias, collective amnesia, or simply a total ignorance of American history.

‘Free Speech’ Is Whatever The Rich Say It Is

December 25, 2022 Adam Johnson, The Real News Network. Educate! Class Struggle, Elon Musk, Freedom of Speech, Media, Twitter, Wealthy Elites

It’s been a banner month for people who love invoking the “free speech” buzzword. Whether Elon Musk was promoting it as a catch-all abstract value to justify inviting transphobes and neo-nazis back to Twitter, or mainstream journalists were invoking the idea in response to a petulant billionaire banning his critics from the large social media company he just purchased for $44 billion, everyone these past few weeks has had some opinion on “free speech,” what it means, and who its supposed champion—or, more often than not, its most hypocritical defender—truly is. What the conversation has been largely lacking (other than a coherent definition of “free speech”) is a serious acknowledgment that free speech as a concept means very little if we don’t discuss how massive asymmetries in the distribution of power and the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a tiny few effectively determine who has the right to speak freely and who doesn’t.

Guarding Democracy From News

June 6, 2022 John Kiriakou, Consortium News. Educate! Censorship, Freedom of Speech, Journalism, Media

The past month has seen blows against freedom of speech for independent news outlets and, indeed, for all Americans. I’m not being hyperbolic here. There are real threats to our freedom of speech against which we ought to mobilize. First, the Biden administration named something called a “Disinformation Governance Board,” housed in the Department of Homeland Security, whose job will supposedly be to “standardize the treatment of disinformation by the agencies it oversees.” That means that the government will be the final arbiter of what disinformation is. It will decide what we can and can’t read. At least that’s the plan. (It is now on hold after an angry backlash.)

Court Refuses To Block Panel Talk On Palestine At UMass-Amherst

May 4, 2019 By Jim Russell, The Republican Resist! Freedom of Speech, Human Rights, Palestine

Suffolk Superior Court Judge Robert L. Ullmann on Thursday refused to issue an injunction requested by attorney Karen Hurvitz to prevent a panel discussion on Palestine from being convened at University of Massachusetts campus. Hurvitz argued the event could wound the college’s reputation, harm Jewish students and violate anti-discrimination policies. The program, titled, “Not Backing Down: Israel, Free Speech & the Battle for Palestinian Rights” will now go ahead as scheduled on Saturday, beginning at 6:30 p.m. at the UMass Fine Arts Center.

Dakota Access Pipeline Company Is Abusing The Judicial System To Silence Dissent

March 2, 2019 Nicola Morrow, ACLU Educate! Corporate crime, Dakota Access Pipeline, Freedom of Speech

In a win for free speech, a federal court in North Dakota recently dismissed a baseless $900 million lawsuit brought by the Dakota Access Pipeline company against Greenpeace and a number of individual protesters. The company should have learned its lesson. Instead, it refiled the case in state court. These meritless cases are textbook examples of “Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation,” or SLAPPs. This tactic is increasingly used by corporations to silence critics with expensive legal actions. Protesters and advocacy groups have the right to freely and vigorously criticize their opponents, even when their speech threatens to subvert corporate interests.

Academic Institutions Must Defend Free Speech

December 27, 2018 Staff, Theinternationalcommittee.org Create! Free Speech, Freedom of Speech, Higher Education

We, the undersigned, oppose the coordinated campaign to deny academics their free speech rights due to their defense of Palestinian rights and criticism of the policies and practices of the state of Israel. Temple University in Philadelphia, USA and the University of Sydney, Australia have been under great pressure to fire, respectively, Marc Lamont Hill and Tim Anderson, both senior academics at their institutions, for these reasons. Steven Salaita and Norman Finkelstein have already had their careers destroyed by such attacks. Hatem Bazian, Ahlam Muhtaseb, William Robinson, Rabab Abdulhadi and others have also been threatened.

National Park Service Proposes Severe Restrictions On Protests In Washington, DC

October 11, 2018 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, Popular Resistance Resist! Donald Trump, Freedom of Speech, Right to Protest

The National Park Service has proposed major changes in rules for protests in Washington, DC that would severely undermine constitutionally protected First Amendment rights. These restrictions would undermine hard one victories for Freedom of Speech and the Right of Assembly in Washington, DC. We need people to take action now to comment on these proposals. In an administrative proceeding like this the evidence in the case comes from the record of public comments. Therefore we need you to write comments that reflect on the importance of protest at the White House and in Washington, DC. Popular Resistance will be submitting comments that cover our history of organizing and participating in protests in the nation's capitol but your individual experiences will also be valuable.

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