Category Archives: Freedom of Speech

India has failed Taslima Nasreen yet again. The fact that the Bangladeshi author was denied entry into Aurangabad in Maharashtra, despite BJP governments at the state and the Centre, indicates that there is no space for freedom of speech in India regardless of which political formation is in power.

Cartoon by Manjul

And this isn't the first time that Nasreen has faced bullying from fundamentalists in India. What makes her case truly tragic is that there is no one to speak up for her. In her work, Nasreen has often taken a stand against bigotry and intolerance in Islam and has largely been abandoned by the so-called liberals. Her ordeals, in India at least, sit at the intersection of constitutional ambiguity, pseudo-secularism, votebank politics, mob violence and the State's repeated and pathetic failure in implementing law and order.

It is bad enough that the exiled author, now a Swedish citizen, has to go through the annual humiliation of applying for an Indian visa. Now it appears that we are unable to ensure even her basic safety when she is in the country on a low-key, private visit. She intended to visit the Ajanta and Ellora caves but all she witnessed was the caving in of the Maharashtra Police.

Rahul Shrirame, deputy commissioner of police (Zone-II), told PTI that the author, who landed in Aurangabad around 7.30 pm on Saturday, was immediately sent back by a Mumbai-bound flight to avoid any "law and order problem" in the city.

Yashasvi Yadav, the city police commissioner, told The Times of India that the writer had not shared prior details of her visit with the cops, and "citing security reasons, we asked her to board the next flight, and she agreed".

File image of Taslima Nasreen. PTI

"There is already tension and tight security in the city because of the ongoing demolition of illegal religious structures. We cannot tackle more problems at this moment," another police officer was quoted as saying in the same report.

Interestingly, even as the police claimed that they were unaware of Nasreen's itinerary until an hour of her arrival, the protestors a motley crew led by AIMIM legislator Imtiyaz Jaleel possessed specific details of her programme. They knew when she would arrive and were ready at the airport gate with placards, while another group started creating a ruckus in front of the five-star hotel where she had booked a room in her friend's name.

Shrirame admitted that the protestors knew very specific details. "We are wondering about the source of such specific information. The protestors were aware of her entire schedule, including the places she would be visiting and the date she would be returning."

An argument is being made that it was Nasreen's decision to return to Mumbai. She acted out of own volition. This is hogwash. When cops are dropping large hints that her stay at Aurangabad could "create law and order problems", what is she to do? Take a risk? The law and order machinery is part of the state's coercive power. And it exists for a reason. It is the state's responsibility to ensure rule of law and it cannot put the onus on the individual. It is a pathetic attempt at blame-shifting and paints a miserable picture of the Devendra Fadnavis administration.

Sadly, the script follows the template set by the Left Front or Trinamool Congress governments in West Bengal. The "progressive" Left Front had repeatedly caved in before Islamists in banning Nasreen's bookDwikhandita in 2004, or in asking her to leave the state in 2007 to ensure peace.

Soon after coming to power, the Mamata Banerjee government in 2012 had cancelled the release of her book Nirbashan at the vaunted Kolkata Book Fair, and a year later, stopped the airing of a TV serial scripted by the acclaimed author. According to a report in The Indian Express, it was done under direct instructions from the chief minister.

This prompted Nasreen to tell the media that Mamata turned out to be harsher than the earlier Left regime. "I had expected the situation in West Bengal to change after Mamata came to power. But I was wrong. I found her harsher than the earlier Left Front government," she was quoted as saying.

Furthermore, in an interview to Catch News, the writer had blasted the TMC government for "creating a Frankenstein". "Mamata Banerjee's Muslim appeasement policy made these fundamentalists this violent. I remember, two years ago, when her government banned my TV script only to appease some Muslim fanatics. Now she is seeing the results of those actions. She has created a Frankenstein monster."

It isn't about the BJP, the Left Front, Congress (banning Salman Rushdie) or the TMC, however. It is about the State's failure to uphold an individual's rights before the coercive power of the collective. This mentality goes at the heart of the mob violence or lynching episodes in India where anyone can twist rules and break laws under the cover of a group.

The Constitution fails to protect the citizen, simply because far too many dilutions have been allowed to affect the sanctity of Article 19(1)(a). Free speech is one of the building blocks of democracy, but in India, in a radical sleight of competitive vote-bank politics, the fundamental right to express one's opinion has been totally usurped by one's right to feel offended.

In the current scenario, furthermore, there is another devious ploy at work. The AIMIM is catering to its electoral constituency in protesting against Nasreen (never mind that many of those protestors may not have read even one her books), while the BJP is scoring points in letting the author become a victim of Islamist intolerance. It's a zero sum, yet a win-win game for both.

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India has failed Taslima Nasreen yet again: Freedom of speech is still a victim as govt, police pass the buck - Firstpost

Its not just an unassuming carton in the supermarket dairy aisle. At least, not anymore.

Soy milk has been available since 1947 and is currently in high demand, bringing in about $300 million per year. Despite its popularityor perhaps because of itthe beverage has also found itself at the center of a global debate over freedom of speech.

Traditional dairy companies are arguing that the soy industry has inappropriately coopted terminologies such as milk to sell products, and that in doing so, its confusing consumers. The debate is reaching a fever pitch as cow-milk peddlersespecially in the USfind themselves in the sales doldrums while simultaneously having to fight off consumer interest in vegan, plant-based food companies looking to take more of their market share.

As a result of sour dairy-company profits, the soyfood industryworth about $5 billionis increasingly finding itself in courtrooms around the world. At its core, these cases boil down to the issue of free speech, and whether a beverage made by a commercial enterprisesuch as a soy milk companycan legally describe itself as milk.

Whether a soy company can market its liquid product as milk depends on where you are in the world. Thats because its one thing to consider individual peoples freedom of speech, but when it comes to businesses, governments take different positions globally. Those differences have created a legal minefield for soy milk.

In the US, the right to free speech includes protections for commercial speech, which is speech done on behalf of a company for the intent of making a profit. In places such as Canada and the European Union, it is generally upheld as the freedom of expression, which includes the right to hold opinions and impart ideas without interference by the government. When it comes to how that applies to corporations, the European Commission, the EUs ruling body, commits to promoting best practices by companies.

In Europe, this sort of language leaves a lot of wiggle room in the grey area of commercial speech. I think the American acceptance of commercial speech as a form of speech differentiates us from other countries, says Roy Gutterman, the director of Syracuse Universitys Tully Center for Free Speech. Other countries have way more room to regulate. We leave less room for the government to decide when it comes to speech issues.

The different legal attitudes toward freedom of speech mean that in the US, courts generally side with plant-based food companies, and in Europe, courts are ruling against them.

In June, the European Court of Justice heard a case in which a company called TofuTown was challenged by a German consumer-protection group. The court ultimately ruled that plant-based foods in the EU cannot be sold as milk, butter, and cheese because their chief ingredient isnt derived from an animal. Consumers could be confused, the court said. This ruling stands even if those products are clearly marketed as animal-free, such as TofuTowns products soyatoo tofu butter and veggie cheese.

In the same month, a US court heard a similar case against WhiteWave Foods, which produces Silk and So Delicious soy, almond, coconut, and cashew products, such as non-dairy milk, creamer, yoghurt, and ice-cream alternatives. The federal district court in California dismissed the issue outright, saying there was no consumer confusion. The court added that the challengers essentially allege that a reasonable consumer would view the terms soy milk and almond milk, disregard the first words in the names, and assume that the beverages came from cows. One month before, another federal court in California ruled in favor of almond-milk maker Blue Diamond Growers, concluding that the challenger failed to plausibly allege that a reasonable consumer is likely to be deceived.

Still, the laws in Europe arent totally cut-and-dry. In 2010, the European Commission (pdf) oddly included coconut milk, ice cream, cocoa butter, and peanut butter on a list of products that are protected. This patchwork of different rules across the globe makes it especially difficult for companies looking to expand business, as discrepancies across borders can cause prickly problems for food companies looking to get their products in more supermarkets.

For an American soy-milk maker that wants to expand into Europe, this would present a serious policy challenge, says Jessica Almy, director of policy at the Good Food Institute (GFI), a Washington-based group that supports and lobbies on behalf of vegan and vegetarian food companies. Where theres no consumer confusion, they cant be restricting what goes on the label. For that reason, GFI is looking for ways to try and reshape regulations in Europe to clear a path for products such as soy milk.

The results of these legal skirmishes will stock the fridge for a food-production future that might be less reliant on animal-based agriculture. For example, new food-technology companies perfecting lab-made meats and acellular milk will be watching these battles closely to see how they will be able to market their products. In the global marketplace, these kinds of companies are still currently tiny players with big ambitions. But if they cant jump the freedom-of-speech hurdle, there will be serious roadblocks to cracking into big markets around the world.

This sounds like its a cutting edge issue thats going to be gaining some publicity and notoriety as it develops, Gutterman says.

Read this next: How the vegan movement broke out of its echo chamber and finally started disrupting things

The rest is here:
Soy milk is at the epicenter of a global free-speech debate - Quartz

Does Congress have a place in the free speech campus debate? The House of Representatives subcommittee on intergovernmental affairs sought to find out in their hearing on the Challenges to Freedom of Speech on College Campuses.

The committee is concerned about the state of free speech on college campuses amid the protests in the past year against controversial speakers such as alt-right advocate Milo Yiannopoulos and conservative pundit Ann Coulter, bothat the University of California-Berkeley, where protests ensued.

The key issue is whether, in an effort to preserve free speech, college campuses could fall into an area where their actions would inhibit it.

The House hearing comes on the heels of a similar hearing in the Senate last month.

The House hearing focused on a recent law in Wisconsin which seeks to allow for the suspension or expulsion of any University of Wisconsin student who engages in indecent, profane, boisterous, obscene, unreasonably loud or other disorderly conduct that interferes with the free expression of others, and committee members were especially concerned with how conservative speakers could be silenced by those who disagree with their opinions.

The experts agreed that the government should not have a role in policing free speech on campuses or deliberating what is considered to be a breech of free speech though disagreed on who should.

Michael Zimmerman, the former provost and vice president for academic affairs at the Evergreen State College which has recently grappled with protests and free speech issues on its campus advocated for putting the control in the hands of the school administrators.

This is wrong and it must stop, but what we dont need is additional legislation, he said. We currently have all the tools we need to fix the problem if we have the courage to use them. College administrators need to have the courage to stand for what is right, to stand for principles rather than expediency, and to risk alienating some in the same of those principles.

He affirmed his commitment to freedom of speech on campus: When we shut out voices, we shut out ideas, and serious consequences ensue.

Though Ben Shapiro, editor-in-chief of conservative news and opinion site the Daily Wire, highlighted instances where he felt the administrations decisions infringed on his own right to free speech, such as at the University of Wisconsin where he gave a speech last year which was interrupted by protesters. He said he asked the police to intervene, but they told him the administration advised them not to.

What Im seeing is a hecklers veto thats taking place on campuses, Shapiro said. What Im seeing is people engaging in free speech that is not made to enrich the debate, but in order to shut down the debate, and there have to be some sort of ramifications for people who are actually committing trespass.

At a minimum, the clearest way experts see to protect free speech is to encourage more dialogue overall, especially on controversial topics.

The appropriate answer, as the Supreme Court has said, is more speech, counter speech, said New York Law School professor Nadine Strossen, and interestingly enough, evidence indicates that it is far more effective than censorship in robustly effectively countering ideas that we disagree with.

Zimmerman echoed Strossens point as well.

The more we talk with one another and the more we listen to one another, the easier it is to understand one another, Zimmerman said. When we look at others as other, we can demonize them, we can ignore their ideas and know their ideas are wrong. When we understand who these people are and what they believe, its so much easier to share what we have in common, instead of looking for our differences.

Emma Kinery is a University of Michigan student and a USA TODAY intern.

More here:
Who should police free speech on college campuses? Congress wants to know - USA TODAY

From the Financial Timesearlier this week:

German media were too uncritical in their coverage of the 2015 refugee crisis, giving Angela Merkels open-door policy a free pass and failing to represent the legitimate concerns of ordinary people alarmed by the influx, a new study has found.The report, commissioned by the Otto Brenner Stiftung in Frankfurt, said the coverage was so one-sided that it ended up deepening the ideological rift in Germany between liberals on the one hand and nationalists and conservatives on the other.

Up until late autumn 2015 hardly any editorials dealt with the concerns, fears and also resistance of a growing part of the population, the report said. When they did, they adopted a didactic or in the case of east Germany [where anti-immigrant sentiment is strongest], a contemptuous tone.

The study, led by Michael Haller, a former senior editor at weekly newspaper Die Zeit, is the most comprehensive analysis of how the German media dealt with the migrant crisis

Newspapers were filled with articles about the new Willkommenskultur or welcome culture, epitomised by the crowds who gathered in Munich station in September 2015 to greet refugees arriving from Hungary and hand out sweets and toys.

The report said Willkommenskultur became a kind of magic word used by certain sections of the media to turn ordinary people into good Samaritans and encourage them to carry out acts of kindness towards newcomers.

And yet even this was not enough for Merkel, an authoritarian curiously now widely praised as a defender of liberal (in the accurate sense of that word) values.

Heres CNBC from September, 2015:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel was overheard confronting Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg over incendiary posts on the social network, Bloomberg reported on Sunday, amid complaints from her government about anti-immigrant posts in the midst of Europes refugee crisis. On the sidelines of a United Nations luncheon on Saturday, Merkel was caught on a hot mic pressing Zuckerberg about social media posts about the wave of Syrian refugees entering Germany, the publication reported.The Facebook CEO was overheard responding that we need to do some work on curtailing anti-immigrant posts about the refugee crisis. Are you working on this? Merkel asked in English, to which Zuckerberg replied in the affirmative before the transmission was disrupted.

Could it have been that some people at least were turning to Facebook to express their views because there was nowhere else where they could get a hearing?

In the course of a post that September on the topic of the German governments attitude to (yes, sometimes ugly) dissent, I noted this from a Breitbart report:

An organisation run by a former Stasi agent has been recruited by the German government to patrol Facebook in a bid to stamp out xenophobic comments. Those caught posting material that the government disagrees with are likely to face criminal prosecution.Germany is set to welcome one million new immigrants this year, a move that has not been without controversy. Determined to see his fellow Germans embrace their new multicultural homeland, Justice Minister Heiko Maas has decided to crack down on those citizens who criticise the influx, especially those who take to their own private Facebook accounts to do so.Maas has recruited the help of an organisation Network Against Nazis (Netz Gegen Nazis, or NAN) to aid him in his crackdown. NAN was founded by, and according to its website works in partnership with, the Amaedu Antonio Foundation, run by Anetta Kahane, who between 1974 and 1982 worked for the Stasi under the code name Victoria [According to Wikipedia she was an "Inoffizieller Mitarbeiter", an "unofficial collaborator" with the Stasi, no agent, but still...].

Fast forward to the end of last month.

Newsweek:

Social media companies in Germany that dont do enough to prevent the spread of hate speech and fake news could face fines, the countrys parliament ruled Friday.

What could go wrong?

Newsweek:

Networks that do not remove content that is obviously illegal within 24 hours, or one week in less clear-cut cases, face fines beginning at 5 million ($5.7 million) and rising to 50 million ($57 million) depending on the severity of the offense concerned.Facebook immediately slammed the decision in a statement. The company said it shared the aspiration to fight hate speech in a statement to the BBC, but: We believe the best solutions will be found when government, civil society and industry work together and that this law as it stands now will not improve efforts to tackle this important societal problem.

The new law has even gone too far for the UN

But the U.N. has criticized the bill. Many of the violations covered by the bill are highly dependent on context, context which platforms are in no position to assess, the U.N. Special Rapporteur to the High Commissioner for Human Rights David Kaye wrote of the law in the run up to its passage.

At the beginning of 2016 (as I noted in a post here), Angela Merkel was awarded the Roosevelt Foundations Four Freedoms Award for, amongst other achievements, her moral leadership of Germany and Europe during the refugee crisis.

Handelsblatt:

The Roosevelt Foundation in Middelburg, the Netherlands, and the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute in New York present the annual Four Freedoms Award which is named after the four freedoms President Franklin D. Roosevelt named in a speech in 1941 and which all people should enjoy. They are freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

Top of the list: Freedom of speech.

More:
Merkel, Germany, the Media and Free Speech - National Review

Government officials in the Australian state of Queensland have introduced a policy that would ban Christmas cards, references to Jesus, and anything that could be classified as evangelization from public schools, the Daily Mail Australia reported.

A recent Department of Education report voices concerns that unbridled freedom of religion has led to non-religious children being forced to entertain the Christian beliefs of their peers.

According to these officials, schools are expected to take appropriate action if they find that students who receive religious instruction are evangelizing to those who do not. Evangelization covers a range of speech and actions, including distributing Christmas cards with photos or words referencing Jesus birth and life, making religious-themed ornaments, and handing out bracelets to share the good news about Jesus.

If such evangelization is left unchecked, the report claims that it could adversely affect the schools ability to provide a safe, supportive and inclusive environment.

According to the Daily Mail, the recent initiative comes after Queensland Education Minister Kate Jones promised to crack down on religious practices. The report has received negative reactions from religious freedom advocates and political leaders who fear Jones has gone too far.

Speaking to The Australian, Neil Foster, a religion and law professor, called the Department of Educations requests deeply concerning and possibly illegal.

Centre for Independent Studies research fellow Peter Kurti said the report constitutes a massive assault on freedom of speech and freedom of religion and believes that the governments concerns are completely unwarranted.

I dont think that children have the maturity to comprehend let alone evangelize, he told The Australian.

On Thursday, Education Minister Jones assured that there have been no officials changes to state policy regarding the issue, stressing that no one is telling a child what they can and cant say in the playground, Sky News reported.

Still, a number of Queensland members of parliament, including Fisher MP Andrew Wallace and Fairfax MP Ted OBrien, have called the mere suggestion of such a policy ludicrous, and have called for the government to officially denounce the ban.

Read the original here:
'It's a Massive Assault on Free Speech': Australian Leaders React to Proposed 'Jesus Ban' in Schools - CBN News

On Thursday, the House Oversight Committee held a hearing on the Challenges to Freedom of Speech on College Campuses.

Several witnesses were called to testify, including Ben Shapiro, editor of The Daily Wire and contributor to National Review. Watch him deconstruct and dismantle the ideology of the campus Left in less than five minutes.

Shapiro ended his opening statement by emphasizing what should be our core values:

Shielding college students from opposing viewpoints makes them simultaneously weaker and more dangerous. We must fight that process at every step. And that begins by acknowledging that whatever we think about America and where we stand, we must agree on this fundamental principle: All of our views should be judged on their merits, not on the color, or sex, or sexual orientation of the speaker, and those views should never be banned on the grounds that they offend someone.

Representative Jim Jordan (R., Ohio), the chairmanof the committee, joked that left-wing college professors would probably find that very statement to be a microaggression.

The House Oversight Committee also invited Adam Carolla, the conservative-minded comedian, to share his insights. He did not disappoint, arguing that we need the adults to start acting like adults.

If we want to protect free speech on campus, we need to follow Carollas advice and establish order. This means enforcing the laws and college regulations that already exist, and punishing campus radicals when they suppress free speech. They are free to protest, of course, but they cross a line when they prevent others from speaking.

Claremont McKenna did just that when it suspended students who shut down a speech by Heather Mac Donald. More schools should follow Claremonts example, listen to Shapiro and Carolla, and defend the idea of the university.

The rest is here:
Ben Shapiro and Adam Carolla Tell Congress the Truth About Free Speech - National Review

Maan Abutaleb is the co-founder and editor of the online Arab-language music magazine Ma3azef.comand a radio showwith the same name featuring contemporary Arab music. His debut novel "All The Battles" was published in Arabic in Februaryand the English edition will be published in September.

DW: What does freedom of speech mean to you?

Abutaleb: For me, it means that we can address what we want to address without having to think about freedom of speech. The problem is that you end up having to talk about things because you are not allowed to talk about them or you sort of self-censor and you don't end up talking about something because you are worried about freespeech.

What gets lost in those two scenarios is writing about something just for the sake of the topic itself. For example, at ma3azef.com, we do not want to address something just to break some boundaries. We do not write about a band just because they are controversial. We write about bands because they are good, because they make good music. We shouldn't have to think about whether this falls into our (idea of)freedom of speech or not.

A screenshot of the Arab art magazine ma3azef.com

But there is another aspect to free speech that many do not think about and that is logistics. Some regimes limit access to online tools of communication so we have trouble talking to our writers. We are even having trouble paying our writers because sometimes sending money to them would get them into trouble, like in Egypt. If they cannot be compensated for their hard work, it is difficult for them to write for us.

Is it true that media from outside the Arab-speaking world solely covers art that goes against the government orsocietal norms?

What's happening now is that whether it is the Arab press or the Western press, all of the focus is on the political side and no attention whatsoever is given to the artistic side of a work. You find that books, novels, music andtheater do not get covered for the quality of the art in them but for the topic they are addressing. I think this is a disaster in the realm of arts and aesthetics. My interest in arts and music is purely the artistry. Great art is often not black and white but nuanced and complicated.

A lot of people find this reactionary and old-schoolbut we want to write about the aesthetic value of the work. Often you find that both the people who traditionally repress freedom of speech, like censors or governments, and the people who claim to be pro-freedom of speech are wary of this approach.

For our magazine, I want to say that an album is good because it contributes to this genre:it's interesting, it's engaging, it's pleasingor it's a beautiful work.

On the other side, we are not going to ignore a piece of art because we may disagree with the politics of it. This is what I mean about nuance.

But isn't art intrinsically political?

Of course. If you're from our part of the world, then everything is intrinsically political. We are not battling that. We don't want to get rid of that at all. What we do want to emphasize is that you can be political but at the same time you can also do work that is great art.

The Arab world is a very troubled place right now so artistic thinking does reflect that - Abutaleb

This view of art -that art is OK because it is sensationally political -is a patronizing view of culture that comes from the Arab world. We do not accept that. Subtlety is being lost for easy-to-understand headlines.

That said, the Arab world is a very troubled place right now so artistic thinking does reflect that.

So what type of art is being missed?

What's interesting is what people are doing in different parts of the Arab world, where they are trying to converse with their own surroundings. We are muchmore interested in local scenes in Cairo, where they are writing music that they know their neighbors, their friends and their community will enjoy.

This is one of the reasons our magazine is only in Arabic. We find that there is a lot of value in having a discussion in the Arab world about the Arab world.

Interview: Ole Tangen Jr

This commentary is a part of DW'sFreedom of Speech Project which aims to highlight voices from around the world on the topics of freedom of expression and press freedom. You can also follow the project on Facebook.

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'Controversy, not artistry': How the media covers Arab art - Deutsche Welle

Barack Obama had his share of poor decisions and outright failures. One of his worst moments came during his 2010 State of the Union address. With six justices seated in front of him, he upbraided the Supreme Court for a decision on campaign finance regulation.

"With all due deference to separation of powers," he said, "last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that, I believe, will open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our elections." It was a rude breach of protocol, inducing Justice Samuel Alito to shake his head and mouth, "Not true."

Obama's first sin was being disrespectful to justices who were there out of respect to his office. His second was a bad prediction. The legendary First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams has found that of the $2.76 billion raised in the 2016 presidential election, corporations and other businesses provided only $67 million 2.4 percent. Finally, Obama failed to recognize the sound principles underlying the decision.

The Citizens United decision has been portrayed by liberal critics as proof that under Chief Justice John Roberts, the court has become a captive of business interests and right-wing ideologues. But Brooklyn Law School professor Joel Gora, who has served the American Civil Liberties Union as a staff attorney and longtime member of its board of directors, says they are mistaken.

That ruling, he writes, is part of a commendable but unsung pattern. Over the past decade, Gora argues, "the Roberts Supreme Court may well have been the most speech-protective court in a generation, if not in our history."

He's not alone in this conclusion. Abrams told me the Roberts court has gotten some decisions wrong, but "taken as a whole, it has rendered First Amendment-protective decisions in an extraordinarily broad range of cases, and it deserves great credit for doing so."

Geoffrey Stone, a First Amendment scholar at the University of Chicago Law School who has fiercely criticized the campaign finance ruling, says, "The Roberts court has given more protection to free speech across a larger range of areas than any of its predecessors have although sometimes unwisely."

Citizens United, argues Gora, has been unfairly maligned. "Here you had a law which made it a crime to put out a movie criticizing a major candidate for the presidency of the United States," he says. The First Amendment, wrote Anthony Kennedy, "prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech."

Critics say the conservative justices saw it that way because corporate spending tends to favor conservative causes (see: Koch brothers). Some other free speech rulings, says Stone, could also be ascribed to a rightward bias such as invalidating rules restricting protests at abortion clinics and overturning a law allowing doctors to keep private the medicines they prescribe.

But as Gora notes, many of the court's First Amendment decisions haven't followed that track. It struck down a federal law making it a crime to falsely claim to have won military medals and a California law barring the sale of violent video games to minors.

A court awarded $5 million to the parents of a Marine whose funeral drew demonstrators with signs bearing such offensive messages as "Thank God for dead soldiers." The Supreme Court said the verdict violated the protesters' freedom of speech.

It also ruled against a George W. Bush administration policy requiring overseas groups getting AIDS prevention funds to adopt "a policy explicitly opposing prostitution." None of those decisions fit the policy preferences of conservatives.

The court has sometimes gone wrong on free speech. It upheld a public high school's suspension of a student who brandished a sign saying "Bong hits 4 Jesus," which it took to be a pro-drug sentiment, at a school-supervised event. The court said public employee whistleblowers have no First Amendment protection for anything they say "pursuant to their official duties."

For the most part, though, the court has been a force for freedom of expression. Gora thinks that will be reinforced by the arrival of Neil Gorsuch, who shares the general approach of the court's conservative wing. The new justice indicated in his confirmation hearings that unlike Donald Trump, he has no desire to make it easier for public figures to win libel suits.

Liberals and others will often find fault with the court, as well as Trump. But thanks to the justices, they will have a wide berth to complain.

Download "Recalculating: Steve Chapman on a New Century" in the free Printers Row app at http://www.printersrowapp.com.

schapman@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @SteveChapman13

Original post:
The John Roberts court: Champion of free speech - Chicago Tribune

Under Chinas increasingly harsh control on information, a Chinese female sexologist called on Chinese citizens to fight against censorship

By Charlotte Gao for The Diplomat

July 26, 2017

Li Yinhe, 65, Chinas leading sociologist on sex and family as well as an activist for LGBT rights, has become a role model of courage and rationality for many Chinese netizens. Against Chinas increasingly harsh control on information, Li has been constantly calling on all Chinese citizens to fight against censorship with moderate and rational argument.

As The Diplomat reported, the Chinese governments clampdown on internet activities has become increasingly harsh. Particularly in recent months, a large number of online accounts have been deactivated by hidden online censors for unknown reasons. WeChat and Weibo are the two most scrutinized social media platforms.

Faced with such grim atmosphere online, most Chinese intellectuals choose to stay silent. Against the odds, Li surprisingly published a long article on her personal Weibo account on July 9 criticizing Chinas censorship and calling for its abolition.

In her nearly 2000-word article under the title of Why should we completely abolish censorship, Li argued that the censorship of books, newspapers, online contents, films and television programs is against the Chinese Constitution and is one of the most critical problems in todays society.

She continued her reasoning:

Then why are some topics are forbidden from discussion? Its for sure that [the government] must have done something wrong but refuse to admit. However, refusing to admit the truth cant change the historical fact itself. It does not work but makes people see the lack of moral courage

She further contended that freedom of speech is written into the Chinese Constitution. Yet, its the 21st century and Chinese people are still fighting for this right.

Finally, she appealed to all Chinese citizens to resist censorship, exercise freedom of speech, work for the complete abolition of censorship, and safeguard the dignity of the Chinese Constitution.

Within hours, the long and powerful article garnered thousands of thumbs-up and reposts. Unsurprisingly, the popularity also led to the articles removal. Li is now reportedly banned from posting anything on her Weibo account for three months.

However, Li didnt stop her exercise of free speech. Several days later, she published another long article on her WeChat account, commenting on her ban on Weibo. She argued that her ban has just become a new piece of evidence to show Chinas lack of freedom of speech.

Although her new article was also deleted, her constant resistance has moved numerous Chinese netizens. What moved people most is not what she said as it is common sense but her gentle tone, rational reasoning, moderate wording and, most importantly, her courage.

Consequently, many Chinese netizens have been inspired to publish long articles to praise Lis behavior and character on various online platforms, despite the fact that their articles about Li have also been deleted.

Charlotte Gao holds a MA degree in Asian Studies. Her research interests center around East Asian topics. She has worked in the past as a news editor, reporter, and writer for multiple traditional, online, and new media outlets.

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How Does a Chinese Sex Expert Become a Free Speech Advocate ... - The Diplomat

Another round has begun in the battle between Google (and other internet companies) and the European Union over the misbegotten right to be forgotten. Frances supreme administrative court has just bucked the issueup to Europes top court, the European Court of Justice (ECJ). A decision, which will have far-reaching consequences for freedom of speech and the flow of accurate information on the internet, could take up to two years. But well before that, the Trump administration should intervene to make clear that the US will defend Americas leading internet companies and freedom of speech on the internet.

To review briefly, this all began in 2014 when the ECJruled that EU citizens had the right to demand that Google and other service providers expunge information that allegedly was out of date, inflammatory, or no longer relevant (although accurate). ThisforcedGoogle, which accounts for 90 percent of the EU internet search market, to bear the burden in cost and resources of removing links to search results from not only the country from which the request had come but also searches conducted in other EU domains. At this time in 2017, the company hasremovedsome 43 percent of individual privacy takedown requests, equivalent to 800,000 links to digital content.

A pedestrian walks past the Google offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S., June 27, 2017. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

In September 2015, the French national data protection agency went a step further anddemandedthat offending links be removed fromallsearch results worldwide. Google balked at this extraterritorial demand and subsequently received a $115,000 fine in March 2016. Google then appealed the ruling to Frances supreme administrative court, the Council of State, which last week pushed the whole set of questions back up to the ECJ.

Although it complied with the ECJs original mandate, Google has been steadfast in challenging the rationale behind the right to be forgotten doctrine and now the more outrageous worldwide extraterritorial expansion. Itargued from the outsetthat we believe that no one country should have the authority to control what content someone in a second country can access. . . . If the [French courts] proposed approach were to be embraced as the standard for internet regulation, we would find ourselves in a race to the bottom. In the end, the internet would only be as free as the worlds least-free place.

It is impossible to predict what the ECJ will decide but one ominous precedent illustrates Europes arrogant extraterritorial ambitions. Some years ago, the EU, backed by a tortuous, even ludicrous opinion by the ECJ, attempted to extend its internal carbon tax for airplanes beyond its borders. Thus, Asian airlines including a growing number of Chinese flights would pay the tax for not only miles chalked up over the EU but also the entire flight back and forth from Beijing, Seoul, or Tokyo. The ECJ claimed preposterously that the rules were merely an extension of EU internal regulations. Others, including the US, protested, but China went further and acted. It threatened quietly to shift future airline orders heavily away from Airbus and toward archrival Boeing. The incidentculminated in a humiliating retreatfor Europes top political officials and no further attempt to tax airline emissions beyond EU borders.

It is not to argue here that the US should emulate Beijing with overt direct trade or investment threats. However, two alternate courses of action should be adopted. First, as I argued to no avail during the Obama administration, the Trump administration should intervene actively in the court appeal certainly through a public expression of support for Google and possibly with a friend of the court brief. Down the road, the EU has expressed a strong desire torevive negotiationsfor a Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) to link two of the worlds strongest economies and trading powers. The Trump administration should respond affirmatively to such overtures, with the stipulation that the EUs continued demand for extraterritorial internet information removal is a deal breaker.

The bottom line is that the issues involved here clearly transcend Googles business model and competitive position in the EU. As I havewritten previously, At stake is the future of free data flows and the accessibility of accurate, public information through the entire internet.

So how about it, Mr. President? Time to finally use America First! for a good cause: free speech on the internet. It has a good ring to it.

Read more:
The right to be forgotten issue gives Trump a chance to use America First for a good cause: Freedom of speech - American Enterprise Institute