Supreme Court in India upholds free speech on internet, scraps Section 66A of IT Act
Supreme Court in India on March 24, 2015 upholds free speech on internet, scraps #39;unconstitutional #39; Section 66A of IT Act. The controversial cyber law that gave police sweeping powers to arrest...
By: Ravi Pradhan
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Supreme Court in India upholds free speech on internet, scraps Section 66A of IT Act - Video
On April 8 and 9, the pianist Valentina Lisitsa was to perform the Rachmaninoff 2nd concerto with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. This week, the orchestra paid out her contract, citing deeply offensive comments she was alleged to have made on her Twitter feed about the ongoing conflict in her native Ukraine.
Lisitsa, 41, who came to prominence through her YouTube videos and who has a huge social-media following, fired back promptly and at some length in a Facebook post (despite, she averred, pressure from the symphony not to go public about the incident). She makes no bones about having taken sides in the ongoing conflict in Ukraine; she is on the side of the Russian-speaking Ukrainians who represent the majority in the Crimea, and vehemently opposed to the current Ukrainian leadership. Her posts on Twitter repeatedly call Ukrainians Nazis and depicts them as a population of idiots and the insane; one purports to illustrate the leaderships faces with a photograph of pigs testicles. The feed also has some racism and overtones of anti-Semitism thrown in for good measure. But, Lisitsa says, she was exercising her right to free speech. The orchestras position is that she went too far.
This is not about political persuasion, says Jeff Melanson, the Toronto Symphonys president and CEO, in a telephone interview on Wednesday morning. He adds, Thats no issue for us. [But] artists using their Twitter or public profile to regularly speak in an intolerant or offensive way about other human beings that, you have to think about. The orchestra invoked a clause in her contract that enabled them to dismiss her.
Theres food here for legitimate debate. But legitimate debate is not necessarily whats fostered in the kangaroo court of Twitter and Facebook. The Toronto Symphony has been besieged by an outcry about free speech, and ultimately had to cancel the concerto altogether (Stewart Goodyear, who was to have replaced Lisitsa, says her supporters bullied him out). Some of the orchestras critics include people who have their own political axes to grind; some appear to believe that Lisitsa is supporting the Ukrainian rather than the Russian side in the conflict; and some include members of prominent newspapers editorial boards: the Toronto Star, for one, has weighed in with a strong indictment.
Few, if any, have mentioned an obvious recent parallel, when Opera Australia dismissed the Georgian soprano Tamar Iveri in 2014 after a lengthy Facebook post was found in which she supported attacks on a gay-pride parade in her native Georgia and referred to gay people as fecal masses. Free speech? Sure, but Iveri found precious few defenders and certainly there were no editorials defending her right to speak out.
The case against Lisitsa is arguably not quite as clear-cut. The Toronto Symphony has amassed a seven-page collection of some of her ripest Tweets, including one that mocks Ukranians in traditional folk costume by comparing them to Africans in tribal dress. There are evocations of Nazi concentration camps and the Ku Klux Klan. Theres no question that its pretty distasteful stuff; digging around in it left this reader, at least, feeling soiled.
But where do you draw the line? You could argue that Lisitsa is writing, clumsily, in the tradition of offensive satire propagated by the magazine Charlie Hebdo, whose right to free speech many in the West passionately defended in the wake of the brutal attack on their offices earlier this year, which left 12 people dead. One of Lisitsas tweets that some found objectionable This is what happens when media gets their news out of a..uh..sphincter, she wrote about a New York Times piece on Russian leaders abandoning Ukrainian separatists included a Charlie Hebdo cartoon, depicting news outlets drinking out of each others rear ends. (In a Twitter exchange, Lisitsa confirmed that she had swapped out the names of the media outlets to make the cartoon relevant to the Ukrainian situation.)
Conversely, you could argue that a musician who uses her podium for this kind of material is not someone you want associating with your orchestra. You could also argue that Lisitsa is propagating hate speech, and that hate speech is illegal in Canada and many other countries.
Theres no doubt its a gray zone, said Melanson in a telephone interview on Wednesday morning.
Whether or not you agree with the symphonys position, they have gotten the worst of it in the social-media war in part through not being more explicit right from the start about the nature of the Tweets they were protesting. In 2014, Opera Australia made it perfectly clear why they were letting Iveri go; by contrast, Melansons initial statement about ongoing accusations of deeply offensive language by Ukrainian media outlets made it sound as if the symphony were responding to someone elses claims which has fueled a lot of speculation about who it was that pressured them to act. Melanson, however, avers that no political pressure, no pressure from donors, no messages from foreign or local governments was responsible for the orchestras decision.
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BENTONVILLE -- Mary Beth Tinker told Bentonville High School students she was "really scared and nervous" when she wore a black armband to her school nearly 50 years ago, touching off a controversy leading to a landmark Supreme Court case.
More than 1,000 students filled the school's Arend Arts Center on Wednesday to hear Tinker speak about her experience and her passion for free-speech rights. Haven Brown, a senior, interviewed Tinker on stage before the audience was allowed to ask her questions.
Tinker was 13 years old in December 1965 when her brother and their friend decided to wear black armbands to school to mourn those killed in the Vietnam War and to support Robert F. Kennedy's call for a Christmas truce. They lived in Iowa at the time.
"I was kind of shy and I wasn't sure I was going to do it because I didn't want to get in trouble," Tinker said.
A vice principal told her to remove her armband, and Tinker did. She was suspended anyway, as was a small group of other students who wore armbands.
The U.S. Supreme Court eventually heard the students' case, and in 1969 ruled 7-2 in the students' favor, saying their form of protest was protected by the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment. That ruling is officially known as Tinker v. Independent Community School District No. 21.
Tinker told students she didn't realize what a big case it was until she saw it cited years later in one of her nursing school textbooks.
Tinker said she and her family were the target of hate when news spread about the suspensions.
"People were calling us Communists," Tinker said. "And my mother said, 'We're not Communists, we're Methodists.'"
The School District's argument for suspending the students was they were causing a disruption with their armbands, Tinker said.
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April 10, 2015|4:46 pm
Protesters against U.S. President Barack Obama's health care overhaul gather outside the Supreme Court in Washington, June 28, 2012. The Supreme Court is set to deliver on Thursday its ruling on President Barack Obama's 2010 healthcare overhaul, his signature domestic policy achievement, in a historic case that could hand him a huge triumph or a stinging rebuke just over four months before he seeks re-election.
When Evangelicals are exposed to arguments defending their own free speech and religious freedom, they become more accepting of extending similar rights to their political foes, a new study found.
"Rights, Reflection, and Reciprocity: How Rights Talk Affects the Political Process," by political scientists Paul Djupe, Denison University; Andrew Lewis, University of Cincinnati; and Ted Jelen, University of Nevada-Las Vegas, will be presented this month at the Midwest Political Science Association's annual meeting in Chicago.
The researchers sought to understand if the recent culture war battles between sexual freedom and religious freedom (see, for example, here, hereand here) would lead to greater or lesser division and intolerance among the combatants. (This paper focuses on the conservative side but they suggest they will also be studying the liberal side.)
In an article for the political science blog The Monkey Cage, the authors explain that their research "has identified a fascinating silver lining [to those culture war battles]. We find that evangelical Christians who are exposed to claims about religious rights actually become more willing to extend First Amendment rights to their ideological opponents. That is, the campaign to reinforce religious liberty might actually increase political tolerance in the long run."
(Photo: The Christian Post/Sonny Hong)
Paul Djupe, associate professor of political science at Denison University, presenting "The Choice That Matters: Politics in the Role of Leaving Congregations," at the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., Aug. 30, 2014.
The study used a survey experiment. A sample of 2,141 respondents, including 274 Evangelicals and 1,867 non-Evangelicals, were divided into groups exposed to different messages from hypothetical political candidates and clergy. These messages were about pro-life protestors, the Obama administration's birth control mandate, teaching creationism, and a photographer declining to work at a same-sex wedding. Each group had messages based upon either morality, free speech, religious liberty, and a less specific message that was used as the control group. The study also used a number of control measures that are common in studies of tolerance education, ideology, political interest, gender, age, and democratic norms.
The respondents were also asked to identify which groups they either "like the least" or "disagree with the most" from among these options: immigrants, Tea Party members, Muslims, homosexuals, Christian fundamentalists, or atheists. For the full sample, the non-Evangelicals chose Christian fundamentalists as their least liked group, followed by the Tea Party. Evangelicals chose atheists as their least liked group, followed by Muslims and the Tea Party.
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Religious Freedom Debates Make Evangelicals More Tolerant, Study Finds
NEW DELHI: Indias top court Tuesday struck down a controversial law that made posting offensive comments online punishable by jail, a rare victory for free speech campaigners in a country criticized for a series of recent bans. The Supreme Court said the 2009 amendment to the Information Technology Act known as section 66A was an unconstitutional curb on freedom of speech. Section 66A is unconstitutional and we have no hesitation in striking it down, said Justice R.F. Nariman, reading out the judgment. The publics right to know is directly affected by section 66A. The Supreme Court had been asked to examine the legality of the amendment, which makes sending information of grossly offensive or menacing character punishable by up to three years in jail. In 2012 two young women were arrested under the act over a Facebook post criticizing the shutdown of financial hub Mumbai after the death of a local hard-line politician. The charges were later quashed by a Mumbai court, but the case sparked outrage and fierce debate about online censorship in India. Law student Shreya Singhal, who filed a petition in the Supreme Court challenging the amendment after the two women were arrested, welcomed Tuesdays ruling as a big victory. The Internet is so far-reaching and so many people use it that it is very important for us to protect this right today, now, she said. Governments have their own political agenda. A law has to be for the people. Farooq Dadha, father of one of the young women, Shaheen Dadha, also welcomed the ruling against what he called a black law. Credit must go to everyone who fought against this law, including my daughter, he said. A series of bans in India have sparked accusations of a growing climate of intolerance under Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi. They include a ban on screening a BBC documentary on the gang-rape of a Delhi student that sparked mass protests in Delhi. Communications and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said the government would respond to Tuesdays ruling after reading the judgment in full, but that it was not in favor of curtailing honest criticism. The government had issued guidelines on enforcing the law, and argued in court that it could not be declared unconstitutional just because of the possibility of abuse. But the two judges hearing the case said the amendment could not be saved by the assurances of the government that it will not be misused. The court said the terms used in the act such as grossly offensive were too vaguely worded and open to abuse. What may be offensive to one may not be offensive to another. What may cause annoyance or inconvenience to one may not cause annoyance or inconvenience to another, said the judgment. Dozens of people have been arrested under 66A since its introduction in 2009, although no one has been convicted. Only last week, 19-year-old student Vicky Khan was arrested and thrown in jail in northern India for posting a quote on Facebook that he attributed to a local minister, after the politician denied making the comment. The charge was later dropped, but Khan described his experience as a nightmare for me and my family.
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Muslim Riots Sydney! Bye bye freedom of speech
Muslims doing what they usualy do. You see things like this all over the world is this a plague? Why do they always have to be like this? A MOVIE A JUST MOVIE!
By: GN| Globalz
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Facebook Bans Freedom of Speech
Another reason why Facebook sucks. Here is the video I shared that got me banned: https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=803880809708134 Sorry for the poor quality. Something went wrong with...
By: TheAlmonteFilms
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Media Studies 104A - 2015-04-02
Media Studies 104A, 001 - Spring 2015 Freedom of Speech and the Press - William B Turner Creative Commons 3.0: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs.
By: UCBerkeley
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AMSA: Freedom of Speech - Where Should The Boundaries Lie? Birmingham University
16/02/15 The recent heinous Charlie Hebdo massacre has triggered a whirlwind of discussion regarding the role and nature of free speech within our society. As the debate continues, this joint...
By: AMSAonline1
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AMSA: Freedom of Speech - Where Should The Boundaries Lie? Birmingham University - Video
Cultures of Intolerance Podcast 3: #39;Satire: Whose freedom of speech? #39; audience discussion.
Podcast 3: Panel Discussion One: "Satire:Whose Freedom of Speech?" Audience discussion and summing up. Panelists: Merryl Wyn Davies (Muslim Institute), Tim Sanders (cartoonist), Pavan Dhaliwal.
By: ClaxtonBayNumber1
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Cultures of Intolerance Podcast 3: 'Satire: Whose freedom of speech?' audience discussion. - Video
MAGNA CARTA 3: Freedom of Speech Expression
The relevance of Magna Carta to current legislation on freedom of speech and expression, including religious freedom. Interviews by Chertsey Museum with Joan Smith, Executive Director, Hacked...
By: Chertsey Museum
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Media Studies 104A - 2015-04-09
Media Studies 104A, 001 - Spring 2015 Freedom of Speech and the Press - William B Turner Creative Commons 3.0: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs.
By: UCBerkeley
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Calgary, Alberta, Canada (PRWEB) April 09, 2015
In response to the 'denier' hunt on Barack Obama's website, Friends of Science Society has released two video productions promoting freedom of speech on climate change. The English version questions why people must follow the religion of the IPCC and informs people of past witch hunts during the Little Ice Age where people were tortured and executed for weather cooking. The video entitled "Freedom of thought" is on YouTube. youtu.be/I0TxfZZN59k
Friends of Science salute the integrity and courage of the thousands of scientists who hold informed and rational, dissenting views on the alleged climate change 'consensus' who are now being cyber attacked as deniers on virtually every front in the US as reported in the Washington Times Mar. 5, 2015. In a Nov. 18, 2013 article in Macleans magazine, while on tour in Australia, Canadian eco-guru David Suzuki reportedly " drew criticism for suggesting the countrys new prime minister, Tony Abbott, is guilty of negligence and crimes against future generations for scrapping a carbon tax..."
The second video, in French, is an on-camera rendition of an earlier blog post by Friends of Science wherein Freedom of Speech/Libert de parole is the central focus, reminding people that the Declaration of the Rights of Man were developed during the brutal climate of the Little Ice Age, when famine gripped most of Europe. The YouTube video is here: youtu.be/16GJbs4U0Qg An English version of the text was published by Troy Media, Dec. 5, 2014 and the HuffPost covered the charitable foundation angle of the story Nov. 13, 2014.
Article 11 of that declaration says:"The free communication of thoughts and opinions is one of the most precious rights of man: any citizen thus may speak, write, print freely, save to respond to the abuse of this liberty, in the cases determined by the law."
Friends of Science are calling out the climate change bullies with these two videos and asking people who stand for freedom, justice, and scientific inquiry to stand with them and stop the climate change bullies.
About Friends of Science have spent a decade reviewing a broad spectrum of literature on climate change and have concluded the sun is the main driver of climate change, not carbon dioxide (CO2). The core group of the Friends of Science is a growing group of earth, atmospheric and solar scientists, engineers and citizens.
Friends of Science Society P.O. Box 23167, Mission P.O. Calgary, Alberta Canada T2S 3B1 Toll-free Telephone: 1-888-789-9597 Web: friendsofscience.org E-mail: contact(at)friendsofscience(dot)org
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Effect of decriminalising criticism of government may be illusory.
KUALA LUMPUR: In an ironic twist in the wee hours of this morning, the constitutional right of freedom of speech was effectively jettisoned by Parliament via amendments passed to the Sedition Act 1948.
Effectively, that right was surrendered in favour of the right of the authorities to prosecute and incarcerate citizens for speaking on a whole host of subjects deemed seditious irrespective of criminal intent, ill-will or even the fact that the content of the matter spoken was true.
Under the Act as amended, a seditious tendency is now defined as a tendency to:
bring into hatred or contempt or excite dissatisfaction against any Ruler;
attempt to procure, the alteration, otherwise than by lawful means, of any matter as by law established;
raise discontent or disaffection amongst the subjects of Agong or the Ruler of any State or amongst the inhabitants of Malaysia or of any State;
promote feelings of ill will, hostility or hatred between different races or classes of the population of Malaysia;
promote feelings of ill will, hostility or hatred between persons or groups of persons on the ground of religion;
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- Atheism To Islam || Nouman Ali Khan || Bangla Subtitled
By: Nouman Ali Khan Collection In Bangla
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- Atheism To Islam || Nouman Ali Khan || Bangla Subtitled - Video
Atheism Dogma: The Atheist Creed
Atheus Ministerium [http://www.atheus.org/] P.O. Box 2224 | Indianapolis, Indiana 46203 ---------------------- Pastor Platt talks about the Atheist Creed - There is no god, nor human soul;...
By: Atheus Ministerium
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The Magician Presents.. What is Atheism?
A description of what atheism is what it means. Please keep the comments coming..
By: Atheism Unleashed
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Atheism Dogma: The Atheist Faith
Atheus Ministerium [http://www.atheus.org/] P.O. Box 2224 | Indianapolis, Indiana 46203 ---------------------- Pastor Platt talks about the need of faith in Atheism. ----------------------...
By: Atheus Ministerium
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Atheism is a Homeopathic Religion- Philosophical Hike #1
Little change in scenery. Trying out a new video concept.
By: thechemistryquestion
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Atheism is a Homeopathic Religion- Philosophical Hike #1 - Video
Duck Dynasty Rape Fantasy and Ignorance of Atheism
Phil Robertson went on an inane rant about atheist morals, but his ignorance knows no bounds.
By: Christopher Cantwell
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