Ask The Chief allows readers access to useful information about law enforcement issues in Red Wing. This communication tool has been developed to enhance community policing efforts by providing residents and visitors with the opportunity to ask questions about local laws, programs and the department in general.

Submit your question to askthe.policechief@ci.red-wing.mn.us.

A: Thank you for your question, and if you observe suspicious activity, I always encourage individuals to call the non-emergency number at 651-385-3155 and report the observed behavior.

In the situation you describe, the parking lot is private property; therefore letting the store manager know is a good first step to ensure the individual did not receive permission to solicit at that location. Depending on the conduct/behavior, the solicitor could also be violating other laws such as disorderly conduct or stalking. Some panhandlers have also caused such fear in customers that the property owner may have trespassed the person from their property and police will be able to verify if the individual is trespassing or not.

The Supreme Court has also ruled that panhandling is a form of charitable solicitation on behalf of the individual and constitutionally protected speech. Solicitation on public property alone is not illegal. This has resulted in some communities creating laws that restrict aggressive solicitation and soliciting during hours of darkness.

City of Red Wing Code Section 6.22, which covers solicitors, applies only to those individuals that are selling a product or service, and does not cover donations of money with no exchange of goods or services. Minnesota Statute 169.22 Hitchhiking, Solicitation of Business makes it illegal to stand in a roadway for the solicitation from the occupants of vehicles.

Based on our discussion of panhandlers and solicitation, there may be different applications of the law that will apply; therefore it is always a good idea to talk with an attorney prior to participating in panhandling or solicitation. Police can also check on panhandling behavior to ensure it is compliant with local laws.

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Ask the Red Wing Police Chief: Some panhandling is free speech - RiverTowns

This isn't hysteria, fearing what the coronavirus can do, is perfectly reasonable, find out why here.

The Thom Hartmann Program covers diverse topics including immigration reform, government intrusion, privacy, foreign policy, and domestic issues. More people listen to or watch the TH program than any other progressive talk show in the world! Join them.

The Thom Hartmann Program is on Free Speech TV every weekday from 12-3 pm EST.

Missed an episode? Check out TH on FSTV VOD anytime or visit the show page for the latest clips.

#FreeSpeechTV is one of the last standing national, independent news networks committed to advancing progressive social change.

#FSTV is available on Dish, DirectTV, AppleTV, Roku, Sling and online at freespeech.org

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The Thom Hartmann Program Why It's Reasonable To Fear Coronavirus Why It's Reasonable To Fear Coronavirus - Free Speech TV

In the face of the Coronavirus/Covid-19 pandemic, the USs extreme wealth inequality, lack of nationalized health care system, lack of a federal paid sick leave law, and other related issues have shown the nations severe vulnerability.

In a New York Times article, Farhad Manjoo wrote, Everyones a socialist in a pandemic. But the laugh catches in your throat because the only joke here is the sick one American society plays on workers every day.

In this dangerous new world, we just happen to be in the middle of a critical primary election where one of the two front runners is a self-described democratic socialist who has been touting Medicare-for-All as the central plank of his domestic policy.

Sonali Kolhatkar asks Richard Wolff professor of economics emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst Is Bernie Sanders the President we need in a pandemic like this?

Wolff is an author of a number of books including Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism, Occupy the Economy: Challenging Capitalism, Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA, and Capitalisms Crisis Deepens: Essays on the Global Economic Meltdown.

His latest book is called Understanding Marxism.

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Rising Up With Sonali Is Sanders The President We Need In a Covid-19 World? - Free Speech TV

As the number of coronavirus cases in the United States passes 1,300 cases with 38 deaths, more than 30 million workers lack access to paid sick leave.

President Trump addressed the nation Wednesday night, saying he will expand sick leave as part of emergency response to the virus.

But the same day, Republican senators blocked an attempt by Senate Democrats to quickly pass legislation requiring employers to grant paid sick leave.

Meanwhile, Democrats in the House of Representatives will debate a package of bills Thursday to give workers 14 days of paid sick leave and up to three months of paid family and medical leave.

Labor Department data says that one in four workers have no access to paid sick leave, including two-thirds of lowest earners.

The U.S. is one of the only wealthy countries that does not require employers to offer its workers paid sick leave.

Democracy Now! speaks with Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute;

Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union; and economist Robert Pollin, co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Democracy Now! produces a daily, global, independent news hour hosted by award-winning journalists Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzlez.

Our reporting includes breaking daily news headlines and in-depth interviews with people on the front lines of the worlds most pressing issues.

On DN!, youll hear a diversity of voices speaking for themselves, providing a unique and sometimes provocative perspective on global events.

Missed an episode? Check out DN on FSTV VOD anytime or visit the show page for the latest clips.

#FreeSpeechTV is one of the last standing national, independent news networks committed to advancing progressive social change.

#FSTV is available on Dish, DirectTV, AppleTV, Roku, Sling and online at freespeech.org.

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When it comes to understanding disputes over free expression on college campuses, such as speakers getting disinvited or having their speeches interrupted, conservatives tend to blame liberal professors for indoctrinating students and ostracizing those who don't agree with liberal viewpoints.

One prominent conservative organization, Turning Point USA, has gone so far as to create a database of faculty it says "discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom."

Liberals, in contrast, argue that concerns about free speech on college campuses are overblown. They also accuse conservatives of co-opting the language of free speech proponents in an effort to falsely position themselves as victims.

Our research indicates that each of these narratives is flawed. We are researchers who study political behavior, as well as strategies for business.

via Gettysburg College / Flickr

For the past year, we have been studying free expression issues at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a campus that has had a number of flare-ups related to free expression in recent years. We wanted to look beyond single episodes and better understand the typical student's experience concerning free expression.

We found that students who identify with the political right do indeed face fears of being ostracized that students who identify with the left do not. However, we also found signs that right-leaning students worry at least as much about reactions from peers as from faculty.

Much of this plays out silently in classrooms at Chapel Hill and we believe at other colleges and universities throughout the nation.

It's not about professors

For our research, we sent surveys to all 20,343 students the entire undergraduate population at Chapel Hill. Two-thousand of these students (randomly selected) were offered a $10 incentive to participate in the survey. This feature helped ensure we heard from a representative cross section of students.

We received 1,087 complete responses. About half of those respondents were those who got $10 for their participation.

For each student who responded, we randomly chose one class from their schedule and asked for that particular class how many times during the semester they kept a sincere opinion related to class to themselves because they were worried about the consequences of expressing it.

We found a large liberal/conservative divide 23% of self-identified liberals said they censored themselves at least once, while 68% of self-identified conservatives did so.

You might presume that behavior by instructors is to blame for this stark difference. But the evidence we gathered does not seem to support this view.

We asked students whether their course instructor "encouraged participation from liberals and conservatives alike." Only 2% of liberal students and 11% of conservatives disagreed that the instructor did so. Similarly, only 6% of liberals and 14% of conservatives disagreed that the same instructor "was interested in learning from people with opinions that differed from the instructor's own opinions."

These are low numbers and the splits are small. They are simply not what one would expect if the narrative that liberal instructors try to indoctrinate their students were broadly true.

Fears about peers

In contrast, students reported substantially more anxiety about how their own peers would respond to expressing sincere political views and the divides between liberal and conservative students are larger. Seventy-five percent of conservative students said they were concerned that other students would have a lower opinion of them if they expressed their sincere political views in class.

But only 26% of liberal students had this concern. Forty-three percent of conservative students were concerned about a negative post on social media. Only 10% of liberal students had this concern.

Pressures that disproportionately affect right-leaning students were evident outside the classroom as well. We asked how often students hear "disrespectful, inappropriate, or offensive comments" about 12 social groups on campus. Students even those who identify as liberal acknowledged hearing such comments directed at political conservatives far more often than at any other group.

We also examined whether liberal or conservative students might be more inclined to employ obstructionist tactics, such as blocking the entrance to a public event that featured a speaker with whom they disagree. To do this in an evenhanded way, we presented students with a list of ten political opinions. Then we asked them to choose the opinion that they find most objectionable.

We chose a slate of opinions that really exist at UNC, such as ones concerning affirmative action, LGBT rights, and Silent Sam a Confederate monument that is subject of a long-running campus controversy

After students chose which opinion they found most objectionable, we asked whether it would be appropriate to take various actions toward people who hold that view. Nearly 20% of liberal respondents indicated it would be appropriate to prevent other students from hearing a campus speaker express the disliked view.

But just 3% or less of moderate and conservative respondents indicated that doing so was appropriate.

In order to better understand the typical experience of a university student, we believe it's important to go beyond singular dramatic confrontations.

The deeper story about free expression on campus, as our study shows, is not just about the shouting that takes place during high-profile incidents on campus. It's also about what students say and feel compelled to keep to themselves in lecture halls and classrooms throughout the school year.

Timothy Ryan is an associate professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Mark McNeilly is a professor of the practice of marketing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This was first published on The Conversation "What liberals and conservatives get wrong about free expression on college campuses"

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Sonali Kolhatkar speaks with Arun Gupta, an investigative journalist who has written for dozens of publications including the Washington Post, the Guardian, The Nation, Salon, and Raw Story.

He is also author of the forthcoming book, Bacon as a Weapon of Mass Destruction, and a regular news correspondent for Rising Up With Sonali.

Despite numerous calls for him to suspend his Presidential campaign, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in a speech on Wednesday remained firm.

Acknowledging his campaigns failure to garner enough votes in four of the six races on Tuesday, he lamented the idea that his rival Joe Biden had benefitted from the argument of electability in spite of evidence to the contrary.

Sanders also issued a warning to the establishment Democratic Party that it is ignoring younger voters thirsty for progressive change at its peril.

Sanders also laid out just what he would be challenging Biden on during Sundays debate in Phoenix, Arizona.

Rising Up with Sonali is a radio and television show that brings progressive news coverage rooted in gender and racial justice to a wide audience. Rising Up With Sonali was built on the foundation of Sonali Kolhatkar's earlier show, Uprising, which became the longest-running drive-time radio show on KPFK in Los Angeles hosted by a woman. RUS airs on Free Speech TV every weekday.

Missed an episode? Check out Rising Up on FSTV VOD anytime or visit the show page for the latest clips.

#FreeSpeechTV is one of the last standing national, independent news networks committed to advancing progressive social change.

#FSTV is available on Dish, DirectTV, AppleTV, Roku, Sling and online at freespeech.org.

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As Bernie Sanders Remains In Race, Can Biden Be Pushed to the Left? - Free Speech TV

The ACLUs roots reach back to the National Civil Liberties Bureau, founded in 1917 to assist American conscientious objectors in World War I, which the organization definitely opposed. It also defended persons charged under the Espionage Act of 1917, and the more draconian Sedition Act of 1918, which neutered the First Amendment and was repealed in 1920. So the ACLUs roots are in its leftist orientation and, from its inception, in defending the Bill of Rights when it badly needed its own counsel.

Among the Liberty Bureaus founders was Roger Nash Baldwin, who served a year in prison for draft resistance himself in 1918 (and would go on to write an approving travel book in 1927, Liberty Under the Soviets). Baldwin did not think the Bureau was sufficiently vigorous or militant, so 100 years ago, on Jan. 19, 1920, he reconstituted it as the American Civil Liberties Union.

In the 1920s, the ACLU stood with the NAACP in fighting racial discrimination and, setting a pattern, it defended the Ku Klux Klans right to assemble, in 1923. One of its most frequent clients was the Communist Party USA, although that was a bumpy relationship: The CPUSA also attacked the ACLU for defending the free speech of conservatives, and of critics of the USSR, one of whom Baldwin became. In the 1940s, Baldwin purged the ACLU of Communists, a decision rescinded in 1968 in grand ACLU fashion.

But the organizations finest hour arrived 43 years ago, in the spring of 1977. Its membership had reached a high of roughly 300,000 when it intervened in a case in Skokie, Illinois, where the town, composed in significant part of Jews including Holocaust survivors, denied a march permit to the American Nazis.

The ACLU appealed for over a year before it finally prevailed in the U.S. Supreme Court. There was bitter criticism of its taking the case, from groups such the Anti-Defamation League. Memberships and donations fell. But the ACLU maintained the First Amendment applied particularly to offensive and provocative speech.

A civil libertarian once observed that there ought to be a First Amendment club. To be admitted, you had to defend the speech rights of whomever you found most hateful.

The ACLU was that club.

Today, it has more than a million members. It ranks swelled after President Trump took office and issued an executive order suspending visitation by foreign nationals from seven predominantly Muslim countries. The ACLU sued. In two days, it raised more than $24 million online. In 2017, its proceeds from grants and donations nearly tripled from 2016, to more than $274 million.

That summer, it did another very ACLU thing and defended organizers of the now infamous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Members and chapters were displeased. In the era of the Trump Resistance, free speech no longer seemed an absolute good so much as a bourgeois legalism, as James Kirchik observes in Et Tu, ACLU? at Air Mail, the online magazine.

In 2018, the ACLU promulgated new case selection guidelines stating it will now consider such factors as the present and historical context of objectionable speech as well as the extent to which the speech may assist in advancing the goals of white supremacists or others whose views are contrary to our values.

You could say it has the best of intentions and you might find yourself in agreement with much of the membership. The people of Skokie undeniably had good intentions in seeking to keep Nazis from marching on their streets. But it was as true then as it is today that free speech needs its own counsel.

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Our view: Now everyone wants to fight the Nazis - The Durango Herald

While were all distracted by stockpiling latex gloves and toilet paper, theres a bill tiptoeing through the US Congress that could inflict the backdoor virus that law enforcement agencies have been trying to inflict on encryption for years.

At least, thats the interpretation of digital rights advocates who say that the proposed EARN IT Act could harm free speech and data security.

Sophos is in that camp. For years, Naked Security and Sophos have said #nobackdoors, agreeing with the Information Technology Industry Council that Weakening security with the aim of advancing security simply does not make sense.

The first public hearing on the proposed legislation took place on Wednesday. You can view the 2+ hours of testimony here.

Called the Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act (EARN IT Act), the bill would require tech companies to meet safety requirements for children online before obtaining immunity from lawsuits. You can read the discussion draft here.

To kill that immunity, the bill would undercut Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) from certain apps and companies so that they could be held responsible for user-uploaded content. Section 230, considered the most important law protecting free speech online, states that websites arent liable for user-submitted content.

Heres how the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) frames the importance of Section 230:

Section 230 enforces the common-sense principle that if you say something illegal online, you should be the one held responsible, not the website or platform where you said it (with some important exceptions).

EARN IT is a bipartisan effort, having been introduced by Republican Lindsey Graham, Democrat Richard Blumenthal and other legislators whove used the specter of online child exploitation to argue for the weakening of encryption. This comes as no surprise: in December 2019, while grilling Facebook and Apple, Graham and other senators threatened to regulate encryption unless the companies give law enforcement access to encrypted user data, pointing to child abuse as one reason.

What Graham threatened at the time:

Youre going to find a way to do this or were going to go do it for you. Were not going to live in a world where a bunch of child abusers have a safe haven to practice their craft. Period. End of discussion.

One of the problems of the EARN IT bill: the proposed legislation offers no meaningful solutions to the problem of child exploitation, as the EFF says:

It doesnt help organizations that support victims. It doesnt equip law enforcement agencies with resources to investigate claims of child exploitation or training in how to use online platforms to catch perpetrators. Rather, the bills authors have shrewdly used defending children as the pretense for an attack on our free speech and security online.

If passed, the legislation will create a National Commission on Online Child Sexual Exploitation Prevention tasked with developing best practices for owners of Internet platforms to prevent, reduce, and respond to child exploitation online. But, as the EFF maintains, Best practices would essentially translate into legal requirements:

If a platform failed to adhere to them, it would lose essential legal protections for free speech.

The best practices approach came after pushback over the bills predicted effects on privacy and free speech pushback that caused its authors to roll out the new structure. The best practices would be subject to approval or veto by the Attorney General (currently William Barr, whos issued a public call for backdoors), the Secretary of Homeland Security (ditto), and the Chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

The bill doesnt explicitly mention encryption. It doesnt have to: policy experts say that the guidelines set up by the proposed legislation would require companies to provide lawful access: a phrase that could well encompass backdoors.

CNET talked to Lindsey Barrett, a staff attorney at Georgetown Laws Institute for Public Representation Communications and Technology Clinic who said that the way that the bill is structured is a clear indication that its meant to target encryption:

When youre talking about a bill that is structured for the attorney general to give his opinion and have decisive influence over what the best practices are, it does not take a rocket scientist to concur that this is designed to target encryption.

If the bill passes, the choice for tech companies comes down to either weakening their own encryption and endangering the privacy and security of all their users, or foregoing Section 230 protections and potentially facing liability in a wave of lawsuits.

Kate Ruane, a senior legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, had this to say to CNET:

The removal of Section 230 liability essentially makes the best practices a requirement. The cost of doing business without those immunities is too high.

Tellingly, one of the bills lead sponsors, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, told the Washington Post that hes unwilling to include a measure that would stipulate that encryption is off-limits in the proposed commissions guidelines. This is what he told the newspaper:

I doubt I am the best qualified person to decide what best practices should be. Better-qualified people to make these decisions will be represented on the commission. So, to ban or require one best practice or another [beforehand] I just think leads us down a very perilous road.

The EARN IT Act joins an ongoing string of legal assaults against the CDAs Section 230. Most recently, in January 2019, the US Supreme Court refused to consider a case against defamatory reviews on Yelp.

Weve also seen actions taken against Section 230-protected sites such as those dedicated to revenge porn, for one.

In March 2018, we also saw the passage of H.R. 1865, the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) bill, which makes online prostitution ads a federal crime and which amended Section 230.

In response to the overwhelming vote to pass the bill it sailed through on a 97-2 vote, over the protests of free-speech advocates, constitutional law experts and sex trafficking victims Craigslist shut down its personals section.

Besides the proposed bill containing no tools to actually stop online child abuse, it would actually make it much harder to prosecute pedophiles, according to an analysis from The Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School. As explained by Riana Pfefferkorn, Associate Director of Surveillance and Cybersecurity, as it now stands, online providers proactively, and voluntarily, scan for child abuse images by comparing their hash values to known abusive content.

Apple does it with iCloud content, Facebook has used hashing to stop millions of nude childrens images, and Google released a free artificial intelligence tool to help stamp out abusive material, among other voluntary efforts by major online platforms.

The key word is voluntarily, Pfefferkorn says. Those platforms are all private companies, as opposed to government agencies, which are required by Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search to get warrants before they search our digital content, including our email, chat discussions, and cloud storage.

The reason that private companies like Facebook can, and do, do exactly that is that they are not the government, theyre private actors, so the Fourth Amendment doesnt apply to them.

Turning the private companies that provide those communications into agents of the state would, ironically, result in courts suppression of evidence of the child sexual exploitation crimes targeted by the bill, she said.

That means the EARN IT Act would backfire for its core purpose, while violating the constitutional rights of online service providers and users alike.

Besides the EFF, the EARN IT bill is facing opposition from civil rights groups that include the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans for Prosperity, Access Now, Mozilla, the Center for Democracy & Technology, Fight for the Future, the Wikimedia Foundation, the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, the Consumer Technology Association, the Internet Association, and the Computer & Communications Industry Association.

Earlier this month, Sen. Ron Wyden, who introduced the CDAs Section 230, said in a statement that the disastrous legislation is a Trojan horse that will give President Trump and Attorney General Barr the power to control online speech and require government access to every aspect of Americans lives.

Read my full statement on the disastrous EARN IT Act, which will give Bill Barr and Donald Trump more control over twitter.com/i/web/status/1

Wydens statement didnt specifically mention encryption, but his office told Ars Technica that when [the senator] discusses weakening security and requiring government access to every aspect of Americans lives, that is referring to encryption.

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EARN IT Act threatens end-to-end encryption - Naked Security

Luxembourg Earlier this year, media coverage in Morocco shifted focus from street violence and rape into issues of defamation, injury, and free speech involving both ordinary citizens and persons of public interest. It honestly felt like a relief from raw knife fight images and ruthless sexual assault stories.

We read about the rapper Gnawi versus law enforcement officers, Mol Kaskita and his Youtube videos, and later about journalist Omar Radi versus Judge Lahcen Talfi, among a handful of other speech cases.

Though the common thread among all these cases is that they compel us to rethink how we look at free speech and the rights of others, including those we most vehemently disagree with, Omar Radi and his prosecution for tweeting negatively about a Moroccan judge is particularly interesting.

Omar Radi is not a household name like others across the Moroccan media spectrum. But for the first time in a while, Moroccan society began engaging in meaningful questions around rights, obligations, and the rule of law.

Of course, the price has been hefty. Ahead of his court appearance, in an objectively harsh measure given the nature of the liability, Radi was arrested. The justice system then reversed course, sticking to the rule of law by not criminally prosecuting Radi and set him free as he awaits trial.

The journalist rightfully received much support from different media sources out of collegial solidarity and pride for the role journalism plays in free societies. His own employer, Medias24, released a statement.

Besides the brotherhood that unites us, Omar Radi was a journalist at Medias24 and was able to make himself loved and respected during this period. He has forged strong bonds of friendship and respect with the team. He has been professional and exemplary in his work at Medias24.

And yet the statement does not address the issue at its heart. How does being loved or friendly relate to the idea of freedom of speech and rights to dignity?

The statement also quoted Karim Tazi, ahighly respected intellectual and political activist: Our country cannot avoid a major challenge. Such moments of transition are obviously sensitive and necessarily lead to excesses. In my opinion, such transitions should be managed by drawing a clear dividing line between what falls within the scope of political dialogue and what deserves repression.

Tazi continued, It is urgent that this line should become the sole recourse to violence, and that everything else should be catalogued as freedom of opinion to be dealt with through the fruitful confrontation of ideas.

By diverting the argument from its legal and ethical dimension into an ode to his character, Omars colleagues were actually doing him a disservice and depriving his cause of genuine traction and wider support.

In line with Tazis statement, there are two options to respond to Radis tweet: Either 1) call Radi names and slap him with a conspiracy theory of supporting revolutionary ideas to overthrow the system or 2) respectfully challenge Radis views through the fruitful confrontation of ideas.

Karim Tazis standpoint is premised on the classic argument that the only restriction of speech should be on speech that incites violence. This theory says any other restrictions would kill the spirit of public debate, and our free societies would, consequently, go off course towards finding the truth.

American legal theory on freedom of speech is deeply rooted in this notion. English philosopher John Stuart Mills 1859 essay On Liberty is probably the most famous literary work advocating for free speech.

The essay argues the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.

Mill elaborates on his harm principle and free speech with a story about corn merchants. The claim Corn dealers are starvers of the poor! can be condoned if written in the press, but may be subject to restriction if said to an angry mob gathered outside the corn dealers house.

Mills harm principle oversimplifies free speech and its extent. The wording of Radis tweet is a denial of Judge Lahcens dignity, regardless of how flawed Lahcens rulings are.

Radi tweeted: Lahcen Talfi, judge of the Court of Appeal, executioner of our brothers, let us remember him well. In many regimes, small arms like him came back to beg afterwards, claiming to have carried out orders. No forgetting, no forgiveness for these officials with no dignity!

When I read Lets remember him, I hear a speech to an angry mob gathered around Lahcens personal and professional space. It could even put him in harms way.

Born and raised in the notorious J5 CYM neighborhood in the heart of Rabat, I know what remember means in this context. If someone says remember me, it is like serving somebody with a notice to watch out for their own safety, both hyperbolically and literally.

With such a tweet, Radi fails to hold himself accountable to Lahcen. His emotional and understandably staunch disagreement with the judges rulings cannot legitimize his harmful behavior.

As much as I would like to defend him, Omar Radi named and shamed a judge, a private citizen exercising a public service.

Was the judge doing a good job? It is definitely an open question, and everybody is entitled to participate in the debate on the efficiency of Moroccos legal system.

Some people might argue that the judge is the center of his court, and criticizing him is a critique of the court.

Here we need to set the record straight. We have to distinguish between a person of public interest and a private citizen. Judge Lahcen cannot, even remotely, be compared to the likes of former Head of Government Abdelilah Benkirane, agriculture minister Aziz Akhannouch or any similar public figure.

Those people made a choice to be publicly exposed. They do and say things subject to the rules of public debate. Such rules allow heated conversations, naming and shaming, hyperbolic accusations, etc., as part of democratically-open debates.

But those very rules do not apply when the same public figures leave politics or public space, once and for all.

A case in point was an incident involving Benkirane and a member of Rally of Independents (RNI) party led by Akhannouch.

We were all entertained by the sharp words, insults, and accusations against Benkirane. As far as I can tell, nobody was sued for defamation or injury, since Benkirane was fully aware that his job does not guarantee him a good name.

Likewise, then Government Spokesperson Mustapha El Khalfi called RNI party members at a rally in Tangier mortazika, meaning scroungers, or people who seek to make money at the expense of others or by stealth. The members filed a defamation lawsuit against El Khalfi, asking for MAD 50,000 ($5,200) in damages per member at the rally.

The case did not gain any traction and was clearly a defensive nuisance lawsuit. The rhetoric came during the peak of politicking ahead of elections and was part of an electoral campaign run by public figures within the realm of politics.

Another case makes the distinction clearer. Shortly after Benkirane resigned as head of government, a protester insulted him through an SMS, comparing him to a mule, a despicably regarded animal within Moroccan society. The defendant received a three-month sentence, serving only two after the plaintiff pardoned him.

What is the catch? First, the defendant and the plaintiff were not political opponents having a debate, nor was Benkirane functioning as a public figure. He was a strictly private citizen, fully entitled to the rights of privacy and dignity.

Second, calling someone an animal is permissible only in the right context. Benkiranes most famous political punchline uses animal equivalencycrocodilesto describe his political opponents, and yet he has never been held accountable for that in a court of law, because the metaphor was hyperbolically used as permitted by the rules of public debate. The metaphor was meant to criticize, not to demean.

In his case, Radi could have aspired to protection by the rights society grants to journalists by upholding the standards of meaningful journalism. But his amateurish tweet does not mesh with an expectation to be treated as a journalist exercising his profession.

I assume Radi, as a journalist, has access to the court ruling. He could have challenged the content of it rather than insinuating an uncalled-for revolution, especially because journalists should reflect the truth that an ordinary citizen might not be able to see.

Free speech is a mixed bag, and saying all speech in that bag is protected can be misleading. When we have cases like Omar Radis, journalists are no longer the watchers of our problems. They become the problem.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Morocco World News editorial views.

Morocco World News. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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The Right to Dignity in Free Speech Discourse and the Case of Omar Radi - Morocco World News

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David French spoke about free speech on college campuses.

Owen Stidman/Daily Senior Staffer

David French spoke about free speech on college campuses.

Owen Stidman/Daily Senior Staffer

Owen Stidman/Daily Senior Staffer

David French spoke about free speech on college campuses.

David French spoke about the First Amendment clash on college campuses on Tuesday in Seabury Hall.

French was invited by Northwestern College Republicans. He is an attorney, an Iraq War veteran, and is currently the senior editor at the online political magazine, The Dispatch.

French spoke about the culture of enmity that is arising in the country, particularly on college campuses. He said people are clustering into like-minded enclaves, which leads to the growth of their common viewpoint.

I want people to understand that free speech is fundamentally part of our social compact, he said.

He added that the countrys population is becoming increasingly negatively polarized, as people join political parties due to hatred of the other side rather than support of their own. Despite the decrease in government censorship over the past 20 years, French said, people are more afraid to speak up than ever because the pressure to suppress ones views is coming from their peers as opposed to top-down censorship.

McCormick junior Zachary Kornbluth, secretary of public relations for College Republicans, created advertising for the event. He said in the wake of the Jeff Sessions event, the group thought it would be relevant to bring in a speaker who was knowledgeable on the topic of free speech.

(We hope students will gain) an appreciation of free speech, of hearing other peoples viewpoints, he said. He isnt a supporter of Trump and I know that can kind of be a lightning rod so that may help us get our message across.

In his talk, French said if people see someone being unjustly persecuted, they should stand with the person, even if they have different views. Acts of allyship will create bonds of fellowship that the country currently lacks. When people refuse to defend the rights of others, he said, free speech becomes a power, not a right.

Weinberg sophomore Elizabeth Sperti, a legal studies major, said she gained interesting legal perspectives on the First Amendment.

(I got) an interesting take on the political aspects of free speech and how it functioned on college campuses specifically, she said.

French welcomed questions from the audience and gave anecdotes from his experiences in college and law school, when he found himself in positions where others refused to hear his point of view.

He stressed that although lawyers have won many cases against censorship and speech codes at universities, people have lost a cultural appreciation for free speech.

Free speech has been indispensable in every positive social movement in the history of the United States, and remains indispensable to those who are interested in social change, French said. And that, very fundamentally its one way that a really diverse pluralistic society hangs together is by preserving our mutual civil liberties.

Email: ariannacarpati2023@u.northwestern.edu

Twitter: @ariannacarpati1

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David French gives a talk on free speech - Daily Northwestern

Its a dark day for netizens around the UK: The government is considering implementing a new law that will practically make social media services like Facebook and Twitter responsible for moderating harmful content on their platforms, Reuters reports.

The country will impose a duty of care to ensure companies have systems in place to react to concerns over problematic content, the government explained. The measure is also expected to help improve the safety of online users, according to statements provided by government officials.

As the internet continues to grow and transform our lives it is essential that we get the balance right between a thriving, open and vibrant virtual world, and one in which users are protected from harm, Digital Minister Nicky Morgan and Interior Minister Priti Patel said.

At one point, the British government contemplated enlistingbroadcast and telecoms regulator Ofcom to oversee the new regime.

For what its worth, the government seems to have its heart at the right place. The new system aims to force tech giants to act on child exploitation, self-harming and terrorist content on the internet, but critics have pointed out that this could have knock-on effects, the FT writes.

The duty of care will effectively apply to any online platform which runs on user-generated content, like comments, status updates, and videos. Any failed attempt at curbing what the government considers harmful content will result in huge fines for the companies, with bosses potentially held personally accountable.

As a staunch supporter of free speech, this development worries me. It almost feels as if the UK government is offloading responsibility to social media platforms. This isnt our problem, its yours, is the sentiment Im getting here.

I hope Im wrong, but Im afraid the newly introduced duty of care will inevitably ramp up censorship across online platforms. Faced with the threat of hefty fines, platforms, whose primarygoal is to increase margins for shareholders, will have no option but to comply with any takedown requests citing harmful content.

What else can they do? Spend an unholy amount of time and money in legal fees defending a users right to express their opinion, and still risk having the government label that opinion harmful content (at which point it wont be the userliable for their words, but the company)? No company is going to take that risk and I cant say I blame them for that.

The UK has had a complicated relationship with free speech in recent times. Back in 2016, Mark Meechan, more commonly known as Count Dankula, got in trouble with the law after releasing a satirical video in which he trained a dog to throw a Nazi salute. In the video, he also used language, which many deemed offensive.

In 2018, Meechan was arrested and convicted of being grossly offensive under the Communications Act 2003. He was also ordered to pay a fine of800 (about $1,040). He refused to pay the fine, and instead donated the amount tothe Glasgow Childrens Hospital Charity. Still, the money was eventually seized from his account by an arrestment order.

Meechan is hardly the only Briton whos had to deal with the authorities for stuff he said online.

In 2019, 74-year-old Margaret Nelson was woken up by an unexpected call from Suffolk Police, asking her to explain a series of tweets she had recently posted. Apparently, some of the messages one of which read Gender is B.S. had upset transgender people, the officer said over the phone. Then they asked Nelson to tone it down, and delete the tweets.

Nelson refused. Im not going to keep quiet just because some people might get a bit upset, Nelson told The Spectator. Im 74. I dont give a fuck any more.

Eventually, Suffolk Police were forced to issue an apology to Nelson, admitting it mightve been a lapse of judgement to follow up on the complaints in the first place. We accept we made a misjudgement in following up a complaint regarding the blog, Suffolk Police told The Spectator. As a result of this we will be reviewing our procedures for dealing with such matters.

Maya Forstater wasnt as fortunate as Nelson. The 45-year-old tax expert lost her role at a think tank after tweeting out her views on gender and biological sex, which many deemed offensive and exclusionary. My belief [] is that sex is a biological fact, and is immutable, Forstater had said.

A judge didnt see things this way, though. I conclude from [] the totality of the evidence, that [Forstater] is absolutist in her view of sex and it is a core component of her belief that she will refer to a person by the sex she considered appropriate even if it violates their dignity and/or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment, a 26-page judgement read. The approach is not worthy of respect in a democratic society.

For the record, Forstater is not alone in her views. Many feminists share her concerns, including JK Rowling, author ofHarry Potter and a self-proclaimed progressive, who came to the defense of Forstater. She was also promptly canceled for expressing her support for the tax expert.

Let me make one thing clear: Theres no denying the examples Ive outlined are deeply controversial.

I firmly believe society should vigorously question such opinions. I also know not every opinion will stand up to careful scrutiny. Nor should it. While I draw the line at calls to action (especially ones calling for violence), what I do believe, however, is that the government has no place in telling people what opinions they should hold even if theyre wrong. (

The UK government, though, seems to think its found a workaround a particularly vicious one. By putting the onus on the companies that manage these platforms, it effectively pulls itself out of the equation. It lifts its hands from all responsibility of defining what constitutes harmful content, which is a particularly divisive topic these days.

Instead, its asking the companies decide what language is appropriate and not.

This move wont make these platforms any safer or welcoming. Itll simply lead to more censorship, both to people you and I agree and disagree with. Itll also divide us even further.

This is no solution. Its just another problem.

Read next: Oh great, the EU has ditched its facial recognition ban

Continued here:

UK has no idea how to handle harmful content. That's bad for free speech - The Next Web

HONG KONGOn Thursday night, Dr. Li Wenliangs heart stopped. Only 34 years old and normally in good health, Li had become a hero to millions of Chinese for his efforts in December to warn about the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan. And because of his popularityaware thathis death from the same sickness might spark nationwide acrimonythe physicians overseeing his treatment spent more than three hours trying to resuscitate him.

According to an individual who was in the room and later spoke to a local reporter, one of the doctors trying to keep Li alive ordered the others, Buy time for the organization [Chinas leadership] to respond.

In other words, authorities wouldnt allow Li to officially die. Even as his body gave out, the Chinese Communist Party manufactured a narrative of gallant attempts to keep him breathing. And they were right to be concerned, because Li is now viewed by the public not only as a victim of the raging epidemic he tried to stop, but as a martyr for free speech.

Under CCP rule, it is common to see people with talent, heart, and backbone ending up as targets. Eventually, they are pulverized, leaving the partys voice as the sole source of information dictating what happened. For a moment, Li managed to break that impasse.

In December, Li was treating a cluster of patients suffering from a virus apparently picked up at a meat and poultry market in Wuhan, a city in central China with a population greater than metropolitan Chicago. Li sent messages to a chat group of medical school alumni wondering if SARSthe Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome that killed nearly 800 people worldwide in 2002 and 2003had returned.

He was arrested by police and accused of spreading rumors. They said to him, We hope that you will calm down and reflect well, and we solemnly warn you: If you are stubborn and maintain your own view, and show no remorse, and continue to conduct illegal activities, you will be punished according to the law.

It was all part of a cover-up that has spun out of control and led to the global spread of the deadly virus.

A healthy society should not have just one voice.

Dr. Li Wenliang, who died of the coronavirus he warned against

Officially known as 2019-nCoV, it is forcing ever more cities in China to shut down partially or completely and many people,confined to their homes, go online to connect with others. Mainly they used WeChat, the countrys most popular social network. On Thursday night and Friday morning, nearly every post made by private individuals on the platform was about Li.

Government authorities quickly issued censorship instructions to media outlets: Regarding the death of Doctor Li Wenliang of Wuhan Central Hospital, rigidly adhere to standard sources, they warned. It is strictly forbidden for reports to use contributions from self-media, and sites may not use pop-up alerts, comment, or sensationalize. Safely control the temperature of interactive sections, do not set up special topic sections, gradually withdraw the topic from Hot Search lists, and strictly manage harmful information.

But on Friday the outpouring of grief on WeChat feeds continued. In particular, one verse that poetically exalts self-sacrifice for the greater good is quoted frequently: He who holds firewood for the masses is the one who succumbs to the cold in blizzard and snow.

People in China are bitter, frustrated, exhausted. In Lis passing, they see the CCPs failure to protect Chinese citizens at a critical time. Locked in their homes with no end in sight, people might feel safe and adequately cared for, but the promise of caged comfort disintegrated as the nation faces a crisis.

After news broke that Li had died, two hashtags quickly became trending topics on Weibo, a Chinese social-media platform similar to Twitter. One demanded an apology from the Wuhan government on Lis behalf. The other was simpler: We want freedom of speech.

Both topics hit five-figure mentions before the Partys censors took them down. But rage seethed throughout the country, particularly in Wuhan. At around 6 a.m. Friday morning, another topic was trending on Weibo: We demand freedom of speech. Posts with that tag racked up 3 million views before censors erased them.

Meanwhile, Global Times, a nationalistic state-run media outlet that functions as a mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, called Li a whistleblower, appropriating his efforts to contain the virus at its early stages by placing upon him an official endorsement.

Little is known about the coronavirus that has, as of a little past noon Friday local time, infected more than 31,000 people and killed 637 patients. (Those are the official figures; virology experts and doctors in Hubei warn that the actual numbers run much higher.) What we do know is this: Its infectious, even flu-like in that regard. And we also know that its current footprintconcentrated in China but present on multiple continentsis the consequence of human greed and CCP apparatchiks overarching need to cling to power.

After Li was pronounced dead, medical workers visited the intensive-care unit where he was receiving treatment. Still wearing hazmat suits, goggles, and medical masks, they took turns stopping in front of the doorway to take deep bows, paying their last respects.

Lis death was unexpected. He was young and healthy, and people thought that perhaps because he was a doctor helping those who had been infected, perhaps because he was one of the first people to realize what was about to happen, that he would receive the best care possible. But that is not the case in China right now.

One doctor in Hubei with whom I spoke said more than two-thirds of his staff had been infected, but its unlikely theyll receive treatment any time soon. Even if hospitals all over the province werent already slammed, regulations say that all medical personnel who fall ill because of their constant exposure to sick people need to join the backlog like everyone else. There are simply too many people who need medical assistance.

Li, perhaps sensing that his condition was worsening each day, shared his thoughts in an interview in early February with Caixin, a Beijing-based publication that has a team of reporters who chose to remain in the infection zone when blockades and roadblocks were going up. A healthy society should not have just one voice, he told them.

Its a message that is being posted and reposted on WeChat and Weibo millions of times in China, unifying many voices that normally stay silent. When a nation thinks of him, 1.4 billion people recall that he did the right thing, and the government failed themand Liin ways that cannot be remedied.

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The Coronavirus Whistleblower Died a Martyr for Free Speech in China - The Daily Beast

The death of the whistleblower Chinese doctor Li Wenliang has aroused strong emotions across China. Social media is awash with posts mourning the death of a martyr who tried to raise alarm over the coronavirus but was taken into a police station instead for spreading false rumours and disrupting social order.

Grief quickly turned into angry demands for free speech. The trending topic we want freedom of speech, which attracted millions of views, and links to Do You Hear the People Sing, a song popularised in recent Hong Kong protests, were quickly censored by police.

In an unusual move, the Communist partys powerful internal discipline enforcement agency swiftly announced it would dispatch investigators to Wuhan to look into questions raised by the masses associated with Li. The Chinese authorities are starkly aware that anger and raw emotions could easily boil over and spill on to the streets.

As in the past when health or safety scandals broke, it is likely the Chinese government will fire a few local officials to douse public anger. But this will only be an expedient measure that will not resolve the real problem its citizens lack of a right to free speech.

We might remember a similar health crisis 17 years ago when the severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) epidemic, which also originated from China, infected more than 8,000 and killed about 800 across 17 countries. In 2003 the authorities covered up the disease for months before another whistleblowing doctor, 72-year-old Jiang Yanyong, exposed the crisis. More recently Jiang, now 88, has had his contacts with the outside world cut off and movements restricted after he asked the authorities last year to reassess the 1989 Tiananmen pro-democracy movement. He is now confined to his home by the authorities.

Unfortunately, China does not appear to have learned lessons from the Sars epidemic.

Despite the flourishing of social media, information is more tightly controlled in China than ever. In 2013, an internal Communist party edict known as Document No 9 ordered cadres to tackle seven supposedly subversive influences on society. These included western-inspired notions of press freedom, universal values of human rights, civil rights and civic participation. Even within the Communist party, cadres are threatened with disciplinary action for expressing opinions that differ from the leadership.

Compared with 17 years ago, Chinese citizens enjoy even fewer rights of speech and expression. A few days after 34-year-old Li posted a note in his medical school alumni social media group on 30 December, stating that seven workers from a local live-animal market had been diagnosed with an illness similar to Sars and were quarantined in his hospital, he was summoned by police. He was made to sign a humiliating statement saying he understood if he stayed stubborn and failed to repent and continue illegal activities, (he) will be disciplined by the law.

Chinas GDP per capita might have grown nearly eight times from 2003 but its citizens have not enjoyed more freedom and rights, which many predicted would come with rising economic achievements.

If Li had lived in a society where citizens could speak freely without fear of being punished for exposing problems the authorities would rather not see, and if his warning had been heeded and action swiftly taken, the virus could have been contained. Instead, it has already killed at least 724 and infected nearly 35,000 people, and the virus is still spreading.

Unless Chinese citizens freedom of speech and other basic rights are respected, such crises will only happen again. With a more globalised world, the magnitude may become even greater the death toll from the coronavirus outbreak is already comparable to the total Sars death toll.

Human rights in China may appear to have little to do with the rest of the world but as we have seen in this crisis, disaster could occur when China thwarts the freedoms of its citizens. Surely it is time the international community takes this issue more seriously.

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If China valued free speech, there would be no coronavirus crisis - The Guardian

How wonderful is Trumps budget for the US? Amazing, if you believe Grover Norquist. Cuts to social security, Medicare and so much more. Needless to say, Trumps budget is a disaster for us all, except the 1% of course. Grover Norquist, Founder & President Americans For Tax Reform, joins Thom Hartmann to defend and praise it, and explain what poor people are doing wrong .

The Thom Hartmann Program covers diverse topics including immigration reform, government intrusion, privacy, foreign policy, and domestic issues. More people listen to or watch the TH program than any other progressive talk show in the world! Join them.

The Thom Hartmann Program is on Free Speech TV every weekday from 12-3 pm EST.

Missed an episode? Check out TH on FSTV VOD anytime or visit the show page for the latest clips.

#FreeSpeechTV is one of the last standing national, independent news networks committed to advancing progressive social change.

#FSTV is available on Dish, DirectTV, AppleTV, Roku, Sling and online at freespeech.org

Americans for Tax Reform Budget Donald Trump Grover Norquist The Thom Hartmann Program Thom Hartmann Trump's Budget

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The Thom Hartmann Program Trump's Budget Is Great For The Rich Trump's Budget Is Great For - Free Speech TV

On May 20, 2017, Rann Bar-On, a mathematics professor at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, joined a group of counter-protesters in nearby Graham to oppose a Confederate Memorial Day Celebration, held on the steps of the historic Alamance County courthouse.

The event, which drew roughly 100 supporters, was planned by Alamance County Taking Back Alamance Countyan organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center once labeled a neo-Confederate hate group.

Prior to the start of the event, Bar-On climbed the courthouse steps where organizers had raised flags bearing Confederate and Dominionist symbols, he said.

I went in and detached the zip ties that connected the poles to the courthouse steps, Bar-On recalled. I picked up a flagpole and began to remove a Confederate flag from it. And at that point I heard, Thats enough now!

Sheriff Terry Johnson then attempted to wrestle the flagpole from Bar-Ons grip, according to news reports. Amid the scuffle, Johnson alleged, Bar-On swung the pole and struck the sheriff in the shin, breaking the skin and leaving a bruise. Bar-On maintains he did not swing the pole at Johnson. A deputy arrested and booked Bar-On into the county jail.

The Alamance County district attorneys office charged Bar-On with misdemeanor injury to personal property and felony assault on a law enforcement officer. He was released on bail on the day of the incident and pleaded not guilty in court two days later.

Last fall, just before the case was set to go to trial, the DAs office approached Bar-Ons attorney with an offer: If he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault on a law enforcement officera downgraded offensehe would receive 15 days in jail, pay a fine, and serve two years on supervised probation. But during the probation, Bar-On would also be prohibited from attending or participating in protests or rallies in Alamance County.

A felony conviction for Bar-On, who is from Israel, would have jeopardized his status as a noncitizen legal resident, and thus his job and livelihood. ICE could have grounds to detain him for deportation, Bar-On said.

A felony conviction for an American citizen is bad, but its not life-ending, Bar-On told The Appeal. But for an immigrant, it could upend your life.

He officially took the deal on Nov. 4. Presiding Judge Andrew Hanford agreed to delay Bar-Ons incarceration until he finished teaching his Duke courses for the fall semester, according to Bar-On. On Dec. 18, Bar-On returned to Alamance County for the 15-day jail sentence, which stretched over the Christmas and New Year holidays.

In an email to The Appeal, Johnson wrote that Bar-On did not have to enter a plea to this deal and, believe me, it was a deal.

Pat Nadolski, who was Alamance County DA when Bar-On was indicted, told The Appeal he left the office before the plea deal was negotiated. Sean Boone, the current DA whose office brokered the deal, did not respond to requests for comment.

The probation condition prohibiting Bar-On from protests and rallies in Alamance County for two years is unusualand it appears to restrict his First Amendment rights to free speech and to peaceably assemble.

I think its suspicious that they would insist on that as part of the probation, said Scott Holmes, Bar-Ons attorney. Its kind of instinctually problematic because they shouldnt have a problem with the lawful exercise of your First Amendment rights, he said.

Imposing such a condition is rare but not illegal under a plea bargain, said Charlotte-based criminal defense attorney Mark Simmons.

I understand that this case had some unique facts but, if the state were to regularly make plea offers prohibiting the right to protest, wed be entering a scary time, he said.

Jillian Johnson, Durhams mayor pro tempore, was among more than a dozen colleagues and elected officials who submitted letters of support before Bar-Ons November hearing.

The fact that a sheriff, who is a known racist, spent the amount of public resources that he did pursuing these completely ludicrous, excessive charges against an anti-racist activist I think is a strong cautionary tale, said Johnson. In places like North Carolina, we are still, in a lot of ways, back in the pre-Civil War era with regards to the power and the attitudes that local sheriffs have.

In 2012, the Department of Justices Civil Rights Division under the Obama administration sued Johnsons office, after an investigation concluded that the sheriff and his deputies had engaged in a pattern or practice of discriminatory policing against Latinos.

Sheriff Johnson has directed his supervisory officers to tell their subordinates, If you see a Mexican, dont write a citation, arrest him, the Justice Departments report states. Johnson also allegedly blamed Latinx people, who were 11 percent of the county population in 2010, for the local illegal drug trade, and referred to them as taco eaters in conversations with staff. Johnsons deputies were between four and 10 times more likely to stop Latinx drivers than non-Latinx drivers, according to the report.

The department agreed to settle its lawsuit in 2016, after Johnson promised to institute reforms like a bias-free policing policy.

In 2012, the Obama administration canceled its contract with Alamance County under ICEs 287(g) programwhich allows state and local law enforcement agencies to act as immigration enforcement agentsafter it discovered that the sheriff had justified holding immigrants in the county jail for immigration status checks on the false pretense that ICE had ordered arrestees detained. In 2017, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions invited Alamance County back into the 287(g) program, but Johnson decided against doing so, amid protests from immigrant rights groups in North Carolina.

Nadolski, the former Alamance County DA, drew criticism in 2018 from the areas Black civil rights advocates after he prosecuted a dozen, mostly Black formerly incarcerated residents who voted in the 2016 presidential election. They were barred from casting ballots until they completed their terms of parole or probation. Nadolski has denied the cases were motivated by race.

In a 2018 interview with Mic, Johnson, when asked whether he is biased against Latinx people, declared, Terry Johnson aint got a racist bone in his body! Johnson and Nadolski were pictured together on a campaign billboard, when the two sought re-election in 2018, raising a concern about impartial justice for Bar-On, his attorney said.

Theres a law enforcement bias, in general, Holmes, the attorney, told The Appeal, but in particular in Graham, for protecting those kinds of [pro-Confederate] demonstrators and a prejudice against anti-racism.

Bar-On, whose wife gave birth to their child after his arrest, told The Appeal he was grateful to have resolved the case, despite the ban from protesting.

This is the first time since my kid was born that we dont have this potential incarceration and even more severe consequences hanging over our head, he said.

Go here to see the original:

A North Carolina Professor Gave Up His Free Speech Rights To Resolve a Case Involving a Controversial Sheriff - The Appeal

Privacy campaigners have labelled the Governments planned online harms regulation a threat to free speech.

Organisations including the Open Rights Group and Article 19 have criticised plans to introduce a statutory duty of care for internet companies, enforced by a regulator.

They argue that the increased monitoring of content posted online will lead to greater surveillance and censorship.

The Governments proposals said the regulator set to be Ofcom would have the responsibility of making sure online companies have the systems and processes in place to fulfil the duty of care to keep people using their platforms safe.

Platforms will need to ensure that illegal content is removed quickly and minimise the risk of it appearing, with particularly strong action needed on terrorist content and online child sexual abuse, and will be required to explicitly state what content and behaviour is acceptable on their sites and enforce those rules.

However, Quinn McKew, acting executive director of Article 19, said the plans would hand censorship tools to firms who want to protect themselves from punishment.

The Governments proposals to impose a duty of care on social media companies will delegate censorship powers to private companies, and could require the bulk surveillance of our communications through upload filers, she said.

While its still unclear what a duty of care will actually mean in practice, it will almost inevitably result in the removal of legitimate expression.

In the face of possible fines and personal prosecutions, companies will err on the side of caution and use algorithms to remove content at scale.

Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, agreed that the current proposals did not protect free speech.

This is a dangerous proposal that could cause vast restrictions on free speech, he said.

Private companies would be deciding what is legal or illegal, and will always remove more than they need, rather than less.

Instead, the Government should seek to ensure that companies have sufficient independent scrutiny of their actions. This is known as co-regulation, and could be supervised by Ofcom.

The Open Rights Group also said it felt that the duty of care concept remained too vague and needed clearer definition.

The Governments full response to the online harms consultation is due to be published in the spring.

The rest is here:

Privacy groups warn of threat to free speech from online harms regulation - The Irish News

Jill Scheyk was an Edmonton Public Library trustee, but has resigned after she says she was forced out by the board over tweets on February 12, 2020. Shaughn Butts / Postmedia

An Edmonton Public Library trustee who resigned this week says she was forced out because of a dispute over tweets and what she deemed a transphobic article shared by the CEO.

Jill Scheyk stepped down Monday, after receiving a letter last month from an EPL board committee asking her to resign. It said she publicly presented a negative and biased opinion on the EPLs stance on hosting controversial speakers, for sharing an internal memo of talking points, and for representing the board without permission.

While Scheyk understands the library is limited in how it can restrict groups using its space, she said the EPL needs to find a way to support marginalized groups and free speech.

What I really want to see going forward is just an acknowledgment that it can be a fulsome approach, and that it doesnt have to be one or the other, like you get free speech or you get a welcoming environment, and its a zero sum game, she said on Wednesday.

Scheyks November 2019 tweets that raised concerns with the board followed online backlash directed at EPL CEO Pilar Martinez in October. In a tweet, Martinez praised Torontos head librarian for allowing a Meghan Murphy event to go ahead despiteprotests,and shareda National Post column that called the demonstrations a nauseating spectacle.

Murphy, an activist, has criticized transgender rights. She gave a talk at a Toronto library titled Gender Identity: What Does It Mean For Society, The Law and Women?

My attempts to highlight the issue of transphobia in that language went unheeded by leadership, Scheyk wrote in her open resignation letter posted on Twitter Monday. The trans community is actively fighting for their lives and human rights, and for the head of a public institution to degrade them casually is a slap in the face to people who are still in clear and present danger.

The tweets also led to an exchange of letters and meetings between Scheyk and trustees from November to January.

Scheyk, who was an EPL board member since May 2015, maintains Martinez needs to apologize for sharing the article that sparked the dispute.

Martinez told Postmedia on Wednesday she shared that article because it showed how libraries have a history of supporting freedom of speech, as well as for supporting LGBTQ rights, and the EPL is committed to both.

Censorship is not the answer to our social problems, in fact, traditionally and historically it has hurt minority groups more than any other groups, she said. We are a public library, key word being public. We are for everyone. We cant pick and choose, because today it could be Meghan Murphy, tomorrow it could be you.

She said there have been more complaints for their LGBTQ programming than for any other type of programming.

If we were not to uphold that fundamental value of public space and intellectual freedom, than we would be cancelling those programs as well.

The EPL held a round table discussion about their meeting room policy on Tuesday. Fern Snart, chair of the EPL board of trustees, wouldnt say what the 14 participants talked about or whether the library was planning on changing any of its policies or programs, but she said the discussion was productive.

People left smiling, not that everyone agreed or was pleased I think people left feeling heard, she said. Were continuing to look ahead, were continuing to ask how can we respond to the appropriate mandate of freedom of speech and absolutely desired mandate of welcome and meaningful inclusion and care for all of the communities we serve.

lboothby@postmedia.com

Excerpt from:

Edmonton library trustee says she was forced to resign in dispute over free speech, tweets - Edmonton Journal

Over 200 years ago the first amendment was ratified, allowing everyone to speaktheir mind freely, regardless of what beliefs they hold. As a student newspaper,we have a deep respect for the first amendment it allows us to do our job.

The first amendment is as important today as it was before it was ratified. Weneed to protect all speech regardless if its far-right or far-left.

This week conservative Christ Church Pastor Doug Wilson lectured on campus for an event called The Lost Virtue of Sexism. Many believe that Wilson and groups who hold the same beliefs should not be allowed to lecture on our campus due to their controversial rhetoric towards women and the LGBTQA community.

As a public institution, UI should not take a stance on what a particular organization can or cannot say. Although these beliefs are controversial, CRFs right to speak and choose to bring controversial speakers such as Wilson should not be taken from them.

Regulating one organizations right to speech opens up a door that needs to remain closed, giving the possibility of regulating any group deemed too far left or right.

But the most important part of free speech is that the other side also has it, protestors and those who do not agree with Christ Church can vocalize their feelings back. Which students made sure to do at Tuesdays event.

Dont forget that the first amendment while tricky is important because no matter your beliefs you can always speak up for them and defend your side.

And while Wilsons lectures and appearances on campus are extremely offensive to many different groups the university cannot and should not silence him. Instead of fighting to force Wilson off campus we should put efforts into supporting the groups affected by this controversial rhetoric.

*This editorial has been edited to reflect particular UI student groups correct stance on Christ Church and CRF.

The rest is here:

OPINION: The importance of free speech - Argonaut

Every generation, and individual, has to rediscover the arguments for free speech for themselves.Some people learn from major incidents.Some when the censors come for someone close to them, or an opinion that they hold.Others come to believe in free speech because they realise that while being offended on occasion might be terrible, it is nowhere near as terrible as any system designed to make being offended impossible.

Fortunately there are short-cuts to finding the best defences of free speech.The English language provides an especially rich tradition on which to draw.From many centuries of literature allow me to list just four works: two classic, two modern.

The first John Miltons Areopagitica (1644) is really an argument for the freedom of the printing press.Miltons argument was unsuccessful at the time, but became one of the foundation arguments for free speech.Apart from the beauty of the language, Miltons work is remarkable for conceding that those intent on censorship do have a legitimate fear.For Books are not absolutely dead things, but doe contain a potencie of life in them.Yet, As good almost kill a man as kill a good book; who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, Gods image; but he who destroys a good Book, kills reason itself.

On Liberty by John Stuart Mill appeared two centuries later (in 1859) and yet the sentiments are remarkably close to Milton.Mills work remains the classic defence not just of the right of free speech but the necessity of it: the right from which every other right flows.Mill says:

If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

Mill goes on to outline four reasons why a society must allow itself to hear contrary opinions.

First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility.

Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.

Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds.

And not only this, but, fourthly, the meaning of the doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost, or enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect on the character and conduct: the dogma becoming a mere formal profession, inefficacious for good, but cumbering the ground, and preventing the growth of any real and heartfelt convictions, from reason or personal experience.

In every age there have been those who cannot cope with this: some who feel the temptation to silence what they dont like; others who become lacklustre in their arguments.

Few people have done more in recent times to force people to relearn the fundamentals than the Ayatollah Khomeini did when he issued his fatwa in 1989 against the British author Salman Rushdie for the crime of writing a novel.That episode in which some members of the British government, among others, failed to rise to the challenge sparked a number of re-runs and updates of the classic arguments.Most succinct and comprehensive is Jonathan Rauchs Kindly Inquisitors: the new attacks on free thought (1993) which began to think through the question of how an increasingly pluralistic society might navigate these waters.Rauch is admirably clear and unflinching: No one who demands centrally enforced equal time or preferential treatment for his beliefs should be accommodated in the slightest, no matter how strong his political grievance.The fact that youre oppressed doesnt mean you know anything.

A decade later and the liberal democracies had to go through the argument again, this time sparked by cartoons rather than a novel.The man who was at the centre of one of those controversies the Danish journalist Flemming Rose also wrote the best recent work on free speech The Tyranny of Silence[2014].Roses book makes some historical points that should be a warning.Not least his survey of how post-World War One Germanys hate-speech laws helped rather than hindered the Nazi rise to power.But Rose makes another point which is even more sorely needed today.Which is that an increasingly diverse society basically only has two choices before it.Either we agree that increasing diversity of people means we need to restrict diversity of speech and thought in order to keep the peace.Or and this is his recommendation we realise that as a society grows more diverse so you have to get used to hearing more and more things including things you might not want to hear.

Well have to grow up, in other words.Lets see if we do.

Read more here:

Four defences of free speech that everyone should read - Spectator.co.uk

AS regular readers of this column will probably have gleaned, I am not a big fan of the Tory government. But that doesnt mean I wont say when it gets something right, hence my applause for Gavin Williamsons recent commitment to protecting free speech at universities.

In a recent newspaper article the UK Education Secretary was impressively straightforward about his intentions: if universities in England dont do more to defend and safeguard free speech, the Government will.

It seems strange and discombobulating that such a fundamental right, which is already etched in law, needs to be restated or protected, especially in our institutions of learning and research. After all, what are universities for if not to debate, scrutinise and test old, current and new ways of thinking?

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But the chilling frequency and virulence of recent campaigns by students and activists seeking to completely shut down conversations around certain issues highlights the pressing need for action.

And were not just talking any more about the no-platforming of offensive thinkers and speakers at university union events. Over the last months around the UK weve seen increasing numbers of protests and petitions against members of teaching staff who are accused of holding offensive, upsetting and inappropriate views, accompanied by calls for them to be silenced or even sacked.

There have also been calls for entire areas of teaching and academic research to be withdrawn or have funding removed, for conferences to be cancelled, all because students deem them too upsetting and offensive. University managers have sometimes been too quick to bow to pressure, highlighting societys increasing confusion and lack of confidence in dealing with issues of free speech.

Granted, the debates at the centre of current brouhahas are complex and controversial: Israel and Palestine, gender identity and womens rights. They are also very important. But not as important as the wider need to protect our right to talk about them. Even if you couldnt give a monkeys about the Gender Recognition Act, the things you care passionately about could be next on the list of views deemed offensive. You, too, could be cancelled.

How could it have come to this? How could folk, especially younger folk, be so easily and willingly prepared to give away their own freedoms? Why dont they relish countering arguments they disagree with rather than silencing them?

Social media has much to answer for, of course, not least the silos and bubbles many of us spend our digital lives in, the echo chambers that reflect our own views right back, the need for every issue to be black or white. When opposing views appear, they immediately seem shocking. Frustration ensues. Then anger. Then offence. Then hysteria.

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Such behaviour all too easily carries dangerously into real life. How long before its wired into our DNA?

Its interesting that the Tories that have taken up the cause of free speech at universities. Has there been a swing towards right-wing libertarianism? Could it be to take the pressure off Boris Johnson over racist, sexist and homophobic comments he has made in the past? Both seem plausible.

Regardless of the reasoning, I welcome the action, which serves us all well in the end, especially with Labour and the SNP tied in knots over anti-semitism and trans rights, rather than focusing on the wider implications of these debates for free speech.

Mr Williamson is being clear and sensible. If universities dont adopt strong codes of conduct that champion academic freedom and free speech while explicitly recognising that this may sometimes cause offence, the Government will change the legal framework to strengthen free speech and clarify the duties of institutions such as student unions.

I would like to see the Scottish Government follow this lead. Guidance currently exists for Scottish universities, produced by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, but recent events - not least the extreme reaction to discussion of gender identity and its impact on womens rights - suggest it is not working.

Any focus on free speech is a reminder to all that while feeling offended is real and unpleasant, it is merely that: a feeling. Yes, feelings matter. But they dont give anyone an automatic legal right to silence someone else.

If maturity means agreeing with something that is said, even when you dont particularly like the person saying it, it also means accepting that the world is full of views you disagree with. Especially if you spend most of your life on social media. Some of it will be abhorrent and horrible, insulting and offensive. But that doesnt mean it cannot be said at all.

Read more:

Marianne Taylor: Why the Tories are right about free speech - HeraldScotland