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Americans growing support for free speech doesnt …

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Americans tend to pick and choose who should be afforded civil liberties to some degree, acenturies-old issue that has flared up once again after a video ofracist chants byUniversity of Oklahoma fraternity brothers went viral. The university's president David Boren last weekexpelled two studentsfilmed making the racist chants.

The popularity of Boren's actions may be hard to nail down (more on that later), butone fascinating trend in public opinion has been quite clear.Americans have becomemore supportiveof free speech for a variety of controversial groups in recent decades, but thisgrowing acceptancehas not extended toracists.This finding comes from thelong-running General Social Survey of U.S. adults.Last year the surveyfound 60 percent saying a "person who believes blacks are genetically inferior" should be allowed to make a speech in their community, similarto the share who said so in 1976 (62 percent).

That absolute number might be surprising - a clear majority are okaywith a racist speaking out - but they also contrastwithlarger and growing shares of the public who supportallowing speech from othercontroversialgroups. Some 70 percent support allowing a speech from aperson who wants the military to run the country (70 percent), a communist (68 percent), and an anti-religionist (79 percent).The only group where people expressed less support for free speech than racists was "a Muslim clergyman who preaches hatred of the United States" -only 42 percent said this should be allowed. These trends were documented by Tom Smith and Jaesok Son of NORC at the University of Chicago in 2013.

Changing politics as well asattitudes toward sexuality and religion help explain how free speech forsome groups has become more tolerable while support for racists have stayed lower.The Cold war is over,fewer people identify with a religious faith than in the 1970s andacceptance ofhomosexuality has grown rapidly.The stagnation of tolerance for racist speech while support for speech among other groups has grown -- could indicate that the public is not purely becoming more tolerant of the rights of groups they dislike. Instead, the shifts could reflect greater public agreement with the ideas of gay and lesbian people and those who are less religious.

Reactions to the Oklahoma case could be toughto gauge if past surveys are any guide, perhaps due to the difficulty in balancingbetween support forfree speech in general and a desire to quashracism generally.Two national surveysin 1989 and 1991 found aboutsix in 10 saying college students who use racial slurs or published racist magazines should not be expelled. But a similarly large majority in a 1992 survey by Family Circle favored probation for aBrown University student who yelled racial slurs while drunk. More recently, a 2008survey by the First Amendment Center found 54percent disagreeing with the idea thatpeople should be allowed to say things in public that might be offensive to racial groups.

Peyton M. Craighill contributed to this report.

Surveydetails

The General Social Survey was conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago usingin-person interviews with a random national sample of 2,538 adults from March31 to Oct.13, 2014. Results on attitudes toward racists are based on 1,711 interviews and have a margin of sampling error of three percentage points.Data analysis was conducted by The Washington Post.

Question wording

There are always some people whose ideas are considered bad or dangerous by other people. If [INSERT]wanted to make a speech in your community [INSERT],should he be allowed to speak, or not? Answers: Yes, allowed/Not allowed/Don't know/Refused

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Americans growing support for free speech doesnt ...

Floyd Abrams: College Campuses Pose Greatest Threat to Free Speech

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What is the greatest threat to free speech in America?

The question was the subject of a lecture this week at Temple University Law School delivered by Floyd Abrams, long one of the nations most prominent First Amendment litigators.

Mr. Abrams, a partner Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP, points his finger at academia. Heres an excerpt from his remarks, which were posted online by legal blog Concurring Opinions:

[P]ressures on freedom of expression and all too often the actual suppression of free speech comes not from outside the academy but from within it. And much of it seems to come from a minority of students, who strenuously and, I think it fair to say, contemptuously disapprove of the views of speakers whose view of the world is different than theirs and who seek to prevent those views from being heard. The amount of students who will not tolerate the expression of views with which they differ is less important than the sad reality that repetitive acts of speech suppression within and by our academic institutions persist and seem to grow in amount. And that is shameful.

Mr. Abrams highlights a number of a recent examples of recent campus speech controversies, such as the one that flared at University of California-Irvine earlier this month after student leaders there sought to ban the display of the American flag from a campus lobby.

He also talks about the decision last year by Brandeis University to offer and then withdraw an honorary degree to a human-rights advocate and former Dutch lawmaker Ayaan Hirsi Ali because of her criticisms of Islam.

And Mr. Abrams recounted last years free speech fight at Rutgers University involving former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who reversed her decision to give a commencement address after her selection as speaker drew protests from some students and professors.

Mr. Abrams concludes:

What can one say about this other than to quote from the statement of the American Association of University Professors that, in the clearest language,observed that [o]n a campus that is free and open, no idea can be banned or forbidden. No viewpoint or message may be deemed so hateful or disturbing that it may not be expressed. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. put it well, when he was a Harvard undergraduate before the Civil War and was a student editor of Harvard Magazine. We must, he wrote in 1858, have every train of thought brought before us while we are young, and may as well at once prepare for it.

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Floyd Abrams: College Campuses Pose Greatest Threat to Free Speech

Jury says Phila. district violated ex-official's right to free speech

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After four hours of deliberation, a federal jury Tuesday night said a former Philadelphia School District official was wrongfully suspended and lost his job for exposing a $7.5 million no-bid surveillance camera contract.

The jury found that the district, former Superintendent Arlene C. Ackerman, and a former top lieutenant had retaliated against Francis X. Dougherty because he told The Inquirer and federal and state authorities that Ackerman steered the no-bid contract to a small minority firm, IBS Communications Inc., that had not been approved for emergency work.

The panel, which heard five days of testimony, said the district, Ackerman, and Estelle G. Matthews, a former top human resources official, had violated Dougherty's First Amendment right to free speech by placing him on leave in December 2010, then recommending his firing.

The School Reform Commission voted in April 2011 to fire Dougherty as acting chief of operations.

The jury concluded that while Dougherty's right to free speech had been violated, the district had not broken Pennsylvania's whistle-blower law, which bars employers from retaliating against employees who allege wrongdoing.

For the First Amendment violation, the jury awarded Dougherty $1 from each of the defendants who had wronged him: the district, Ackerman, and Matthews. The trial judge will rule this month on additional damages.

Throughout the trial, Dougherty's attorneys argued that Ackerman and her administration embarked on a mission to find out who was leaking information after The Inquirer published an article on Nov. 28, 2010, that said she had pushed aside Security & Data Technologies Inc. (SDT), a Bucks County firm that had begun preliminary work on a rush contract to install surveillance cameras in 19 schools the state had deemed "persistently dangerous."

The defense maintained Dougherty lost his job after outside attorneys who conducted an investigation for the district said he had sent an e-mail about the camera project to an unknown third party and improperly sent 50 e-mails from his work account to his personal account.

The defense said that the recommendation to fire Dougherty was not tied to anything he might have told anyone about the camera project and contended that the district would have moved to fire him regardless.

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Jury says Phila. district violated ex-official's right to free speech

Pope Francis Says There Are Limits to Free Speech after Paris Shooting Hoax Redsilverj 720p – Video

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Pope Francis Says There Are Limits to Free Speech after Paris Shooting Hoax Redsilverj 720p
I am just a middleman trying to spread the word FAIR USE NOTICE: This video may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for entertainment purposes only. This constitutes...

By: Timothy anon

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Pope Francis Says There Are Limits to Free Speech after Paris Shooting Hoax Redsilverj 720p - Video

Wonkblog: Americans growing support for free speech doesnt include racist speech

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Americans tend to pick and choose who should be afforded civil liberties to some degree, acenturies-old issue that has flared up once again after a video ofracist chants byUniversity of Oklahoma fraternity brothers went viral. The university's president David Boren last weekexpelled two studentsfilmed making the racist chants.

The popularity of Boren's actions may be hard to nail down (more on that later), butone fascinating trend in public opinion has been quite clear.Americans have becomemore supportiveof free speech for a variety of controversial groups in recent decades, but thisgrowing acceptancehas not extended toracists.This finding comes from thelong-running General Social Survey of U.S. adults.Last year the surveyfound 60 percent saying a "person who believes blacks are genetically inferior" should be allowed to make a speech in their community, similarto the share who said so in 1976 (62 percent).

That absolute number might be surprising - a clear majority are okaywith a racist speaking out - but they also contrastwithlarger and growing shares of the public who supportallowing speech from othercontroversialgroups. Some 70 percent support allowing a speech from aperson who wants the military to run the country (70 percent), a communist (68 percent), and an anti-religionist (79 percent).The only group where people expressed less support for free speech than racists was "a Muslim clergyman who preaches hatred of the United States" -only 42 percent said this should be allowed. These trends were documented by Tom Smith and Jaesok Son of NORC at the University of Chicago in 2013.

Changing politics as well asattitudes toward sexuality and religion help explain how free speech forsome groups has become more tolerable while support for racists have stayed lower.The Cold war is over,fewer people identify with a religious faith than in the 1970s andacceptance ofhomosexuality has grown rapidly.The stagnation of tolerance for racist speech while support for speech among other groups has grown -- could indicate that the public is not purely becoming more tolerant of the rights of groups they dislike. Instead, the shifts could reflect greater public agreement with the ideas of gay and lesbian people and those who are less religious.

Reactions to the Oklahoma case could be toughto gauge if past surveys are any guide, perhaps due to the difficulty in balancingbetween support forfree speech in general and a desire to quashracism generally.Two national surveysin 1989 and 1991 found aboutsix in 10 saying college students who use racial slurs or published racist magazines should not be expelled. But a similarly large majority in a 1992 survey by Family Circle favored probation for aBrown University student who yelled racial slurs while drunk. More recently, a 2008survey by the First Amendment Center found 54percent disagreeing with the idea thatpeople should be allowed to say things in public that might be offensive to racial groups.

Peyton M. Craighill contributed to this report.

Surveydetails

The General Social Survey was conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago usingin-person interviews with a random national sample of 2,538 adults from March31 to Oct.13, 2014. Results on attitudes toward racists are based on 1,711 interviews and have a margin of sampling error of three percentage points.Data analysis was conducted by The Washington Post.

Question wording

There are always some people whose ideas are considered bad or dangerous by other people. If [INSERT]wanted to make a speech in your community [INSERT],should he be allowed to speak, or not? Answers: Yes, allowed/Not allowed/Don't know/Refused

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Wonkblog: Americans growing support for free speech doesnt include racist speech

International groups condemn arrest of Nurul

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Release her immediately, says International Commission of Jurists; government excessive in stifling free speech, says Human Rights Watch

BANGKOK: International human rights groups have condemned the arrest and detention of Nurul Izzah Anwar, the daughter of imprisoned Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, for sedition.

The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) which issued a statement condemning Nurul Izzahs arrest had in addition called on the Government of Malaysia to immediately release Nurul Izzah and reiterated its call for the repeal of the Sedition Act.

Human Rights Watch, in a statement, said the arrest shows that the Malaysian government seems to know no bounds in its efforts to stifle free speech.

Nurul Izzah, the Member of Parliament for Lembah Pantai, was arrested at 3.30pm at Dang Wangi police station in Kuala Lumpur. She was summoned by police to provide a statement for her involvement in a demonstration on February 14 over the jailing of her father for sodomy.

Police have detained her for investigations into a speech she made in parliament on March 10 that was deemed seditious under section 4(1) of the colonial-era 1948 Sedition Act.

Nurul Izzah had read out her fathers statement in Parliament that reportedly criticised the judges in her fathers Sodomy II case. Anwar who has been jailed five years for sodomy is still the MP for Permatang Pauh but he was not released to attend the recent sitting of Parliament.

The Malaysian authorities must stop the continued use of the offence of sedition to arbitrarily detain and stifle freedom of expression, said Sam Zarifi, ICJs regional director for Asia and the Pacific.

The arrest of MP Nurul Izzah Anwar shows that the Malaysia government seems to know no bounds in its efforts to stifle free speech and (the government is) criminalising dialogue that would be a normal part of political discourse in much of the rest of the world, said Phil Robertson, the Deputy Asia Director of Human Rights Watch.

Prime Minister Najib and his government are shamefully using the Sedition Act like an axe to hack down opposition politicians, community activists, and any others who dare speak their minds.

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International groups condemn arrest of Nurul

US firms caught in Chinese censorship crossfire

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Summary:US company operations are increasingly being disrupted due to the battle between the Chinese government's censorship plans and free speech activists.

Companies from the United States are finding life difficult as their services are being used by citizens and activists seeking to work around China's firewall.

US tech firms, in particular those that provide cloud solutions, are being forced to walk a fine line as cloud computing becomes drawn into China's censorship fight. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, activists outside of China are turning to companies such as Amazon, Microsoft and Akamai to disguise Internet traffic by tunnelling it through cloud servers run by the firms.

China's censorship barricade, known as the "Great Firewall of China," is constantly being strengthened to make open access to the Web and communicating over social media networks from the country more difficult. A number of top Alexa domains are blocked in the country, including Google.com, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Blogger and Change.org.

In December last year, Google's email service, Gmail, became another high-profile service blocked in the country. Unless citizens turn to home-brewed email services -- which can be monitored by the Chinese government -- then the use of VPNs, circumventors and tunnels are the only way to access their accounts.

While cloud services provided by US companies can cloak banned website access -- such as Facebook, Twitter, Gmail and news publications -- it holds risk for the firms themselves. These companies are being forced to walk a fine line as the censorship row escalates, and the unauthorized use of tunnels, VPNs and signing up for free accounts in order to link to blocked websites could land them in hot water as activists are breaking local laws.

Generally, the circumvention takes place without the consent of cloud providers.

However, to stop this practice, Chinese authorities would need to block full servers -- which would disrupt countless businesses, including thousands of Chinese SMBs, activists say.

Naturally, US firms are less than keen to be associated with the censorship row. In November last year, Verizon's EdgeCast cloud service was blocked in the region, while a number of cloud companies have cut off free speech-based services -- such as Lantern -- in an attempt to avoid being blocked themselves in a lucrative market.

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US firms caught in Chinese censorship crossfire


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