Category Archives: Freedom

Photo: Creative Commons/Caroline Lna Becker

Eighty-one years ago this week, President Franklin Roosevelt delivered what was, from a substantive perspective, the most important speech of his unique and remarkable presidency.

While the 1933 inaugural speech (We have nothing to fear but fear itself.) is almost certainly better known, FDRs January 6, 1941 address to Congress commonly referred to as the Four Freedoms Speech is now rightfully remembered, alongside Lincolns Gettysburg Address, as one of the best and most inspiring testimonials to the cause of human freedom (and enunciations of national purpose) ever offered by an American chief executive.

The speech was delivered at a time the U.S. was still wrestling with what its role should be in combating Nazi Germany and in it, Roosevelt forcefully called for the intentional construction of a world in which such noxious and destructive forces be forever banished and all human beings would enjoy a series of fundamental birthrights.

Today, at another moment of national and global peril (and in which the basic concept of human freedom has frequently been twisted and misdirected off onto weird tangents like the possession of assault weapons, slashing taxes on corporations, and the resistance of basic public health guidelines) its an apt time to recall and celebrate the four freedoms FDR lifted up and to add a fifth that he would have undoubtedly included had he been able to foresee the changes that have overtaken our planet in the intervening decades.

Freedom Number One on FDRs list was the freedom of speech and expression. Of course, in some ways, the world has made important strides in this realm over the last 81 years. Here in the United States and many other parts of the world, for instance, the freedom of artists resides in a much stronger position than it did in the mid-20th Century when thousands were blacklisted for leftist political views and films and books were regularly banned for obscene content. The advent of the internet has contributed to this trend by making it harder than ever for would-be censors to monitor and control what people express and consume.

But, of course, the fight in this realm continues. In just the last year, forces of the political right have launched a new and concerted campaign to whitewash how American history is taught and renewed efforts to prevent schoolchildren from accessing celebrated authors. Meanwhile, in other parts of the globe perhaps most notably, Xis China and Putins Russia the right to openly criticize the government and champion meaningful political change remains effectively nonexistent.

A similar story can be told with respect to FDRs second core freedom the freedom of worship. While some countries have made enormous strides in ending government efforts to stifle or advance religious belief, the trend is decidedly negative elsewhere. Not only do many nations remain organized as repressive theocracies, but even in the United States, our historic commitment to separation of church and state is under a new and energetic assault.

And then there are Freedoms Three and Four the freedom from want and the freedom from fear. Here too, of course, the record is decidedly mixed.

Across the planet, even as millions of humans live longer and healthier lives than ever before, millions of others live in abject poverty with hunger and hopelessness their constant companions even here in the U.S.

And while the world has made important strides in turning away from the threat of nuclear annihilation that so dominated and poisoned human mental well-being throughout the second half of the 20thcentury, today we rightfully fear an equally daunting existential threat: the global environmental emergency.

As more and more people are coming to realize especially in the dark shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic the planet Earth is, effectively, shrinking. The global population continues to grow and resources and inhabitable land become stretched thinner and thinner. As the destructive impacts of climate change become more apparent, humans are, tragically, right to fear for the long-term sustainability of life as weve come to know it.

Its for this reason that we would do well to supplement FDRs still excellent list with a fifth freedom on which all others remain utterly dependent the freedom of a sustainable environment. After all, the cause of human freedom wont amount to much in the long run without rapid and intentional efforts to preserve the fragile biosphere upon which all life is dependent.

The bottom line: The Year 2022 is sure to feature passionate and important debates on a dizzying array of political, social, economic issues so much so that it will become easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees. At such a time, caring and thinking people would do well to stay focused on a discreet list of guiding objectives, and the one we might describe as the Five Freedoms is a good place to start.

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The five freedoms we must champion in the New Year - ncpolicywatch.com

The major camps in today's debates merely disagree about whose relativism should be protected by the structures of political power.

Conservative discourse in America has set its sights on the extremes of a woke progressivism preached by the liberal establishment in politics, big business, and the media. Pages of conservative publications and think tanks are littered with censure of critical race theory, gender ideology, LGBTQ ideology, etc. This is as it should be.

Yet many of these criticisms fall into the same traps as the very thing they criticize. An ideological and moral relativism lies at the heart of both sides of this discourse: a shrill insistence on the freedom of the individual to think or be whatever he or she (or whatever other pronoun) wishes to think or be. The sides merely disagree about whose relativism should be protected by the structures of political power.

In contrast, we can remember a conservatism that would assert, simply and confidently, that there exists an enduring moral order, one that is not simply relative to the subjective whims and preferences of the individual; that the truth is not simply what you individually decide it to be; and that public authority should govern according to precisely this enduring and objective moral order. Ben Shapiros notorious quip that facts dont care about your feelings might be considered a faint echo of this older moral realism that used to be the hallmark of conservatism.

Yet the capitulation of many conservatives (including Shapiro himself) to a libertarian individualism that renounces the role of government in publicly committing to a particular vision of the common good undermines this commitment to moral realism, in practice relativizing even the claim that moral truth is absolute: I choose to believe that moral truth is absolute, but you may choose to believe whatever you wish to believe. It is not uncommon to hear conservatives (on talk radio for instance) condemning the indoctrination of Americans by the left as a direct attack on their constitutional right to freedom of thought and freedom of speech. Why cant they just leave us alone and let us think what we want to think? Conservatism, by this account, is about getting along withor simply being left alone bypeople who think differently from ourselves. Isnt this the purpose of the First Amendment? Isnt this the noble vision described in the founding documents?

It is important to keep in mind, however, that the liberal proponents of progressive ideology also view themselves as proponents of free thought and free expression. That is, after all, the core of progressivisms main tenets. Diversity, equity, and inclusion are the doctrinal expression of the lefts brand of identity politics, which professes the individuals right to make his own identity, to express himself authentically by a pure act of will. If I cannot simply choose my gender, and claim all the rights proper to my chosen identity, then am I really free? If the constraints of the patriarchal family structure, or Christian morality, or traditional gender norms, etc., prevent me from choosing my identity, then am I really free? The lefts agenda to enforce woke doctrine is really nothing other than its own attempt to preserve that most American of values: the freedom of the sovereign individual.

Both the libertarian conservative and the progressive liberal see themselves as victims of an oppressive and dogmatic ideological structure: the conservative sees himself as oppressed by the ideological structures of the left, its political parties, the media, university administrations, corporate leadership, etc.; the progressive sees himself as oppressed by the very structures and traditions which, allegedly, the conservative wishes to conserve. Both protest that they are entitled to think whatever they please, be whomever they please, express themselves however they please, and be left alone by those who would tell them otherwise.

For the conservative, freedom of thought is a right protected by the original American Constitutionthough not by much more than that, as the Constitution alone proves to be increasingly insufficient against the ongoing capture of Americas institutions by progressive ideology. For the progressive, the freedom to choose ones own identity must be protected by standards of diversity, equity, and inclusion that are incorporated into evolving constitutional structures, including the government, the media, the schools, the leadership of Americas corporations, and so forth, in order to protect the individual from oppressive structures (e.g., the traditional family, traditional religion, etc.) that would put limits on that freedom. Yet both sides are intent on holding the other accountable to their own version of relativism, and they see their opponents as authoritarian oppressors or dogmatic fundamentalists.

Libertarian conservatism overlooks the fact that moral realism has practical consequences in the public sphere. Moral realism requires a strong political commitment, not simply to freedom of thought or freedom of identity, but to the public recognition and enforcement of moral truth and the common good. It is not consistent to be a realist in theory but a relativist in practice. If the truth really is absolute, then it follows that you may not simply choose to believe whatever you wish to believe, or be whomever you wish to be. If the truth is truly independent of an individuals feelings or choices, then it requires a public authority to defend it as such. Without such a public authority to defend and enforce the truthyes, even to legislate moralitythen in practice, no matter how much one might assert the contrary, the truth has been relativized. This is what both the libertarian and the liberal desire: a world where each person may choose his truth, where no morality is publicly enforced except the right to choose ones own truth.

The impulse to criticize woke or progressive ideology on the basis of an imaginary right to freedom of expression undermines the more venerable conservative commitment to moral realism and tradition. Conservatism thus becomes no more than a mask for an alternate form of liberal relativism. It is notable that this mask drops when the same reasoning about free speech is deployed by some self-styled conservatives, such as David French, in defense of woke ideology, or at least in defense of the freedom of its proponents to propagate it. It should be clear that this essentially libertarian approach, even if it goes by the name of constitutional conservatism, is a misguided response for conservatives to adopt towards progressive liberalism, not simply because it is powerless to ward off progressivisms assaults, but more importantly because it is essentially the same thing on an ideological level.

Jonathan Culbreath is an independent writer and researcher living in Southern California.

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Which Freedom? Whose Relativism? - The American Conservative

Equines For Freedom (EFF) is proud to announce that the 120 members of the Riverside High School (RHS) National Honor Society (NHS) held their inaugural Veterans Day Walk-a-thon on November 11, 2021.

Coordinated by Stephanie McManus, RHS NHS Faculty Sponsor, this event encouraged each student member of the NHS to solicit family and community sponsors for their participation in the walk.

Working together to obtain sponsors and then walking together around the RHS track on Veterans Day, 2021, the students raised a total of $5, 069.00. All monies raised by the RHS NHS was then presented to EFF to support the on-going reatment of veterans.

In past years, McManus coordinated an annual Veterans Breakfast, typically held on Veterans Day, but that event, like many others, has been cancelled for the last two years due to COVID. She is looking forward to resuming the Veterans Breakfast in 2022 as well as moving the walk-a-thon to the spring. As with this event, the focus, going forward, will be on raising money to support local organizations which specifically assist veterans.

EFF is a 5013 non-profit organization which provides equine-assisted complex PTSD treatment to current and former U.S. Military service members and First Responders regardless of the source of trauma or characterization of service at no charge to the member. To find more information about EFF, please visit their website at http://www.equinesforfreedom.org.

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Equines for Freedom benefits from Riverside High School National Honor Society Walk-a-thon - The Abington Journal

Two recent works of political theory evocatively capture the origins of the state of perverse unfreedom in which we live today. French philosopher Grgoire Chamayous The Ungovernable Society: A Genealogy of Authoritarian Liberalism (originally published in 2018 and translated by Wiley in 2021) and British writer Stuart Jeffries Everything, All The Time, Everywhere: How We Became Postmodern (Verso, 2021) help readers understand the origins of the shift to neoliberalism from the 1970s to now, the repercussions of this move and how we can shift away from it.

In their influential 1980 documentary and accompanying book Free to Choose, neoliberal economists Milton and Rose Friedman argued that an unrestrained free market was the solution to social problems. They claimed that governments and unions were holding back human progress and innovation. Milton Friedman, who won the 1976 Nobel Prize for economics, also believed that democracy was the enemy of freedom and that individuals were primarily consumers who could better express their preferences with their wallets than with their vote.

Friedman supported the 1973 coup in Chile, where popular democratic socialist Salvador Allende was overthrown by right-wing authoritarian Augusto Pinochet. Despite the junta unleashing police terror on civilians, including the execution of hundreds of leftists in football stadiums, Friedman endorsed the state that adopted his favoured free-market policies. He believed capitalism was synonymous with freedom, making a military dictatorship preferable to a reformist, moderate Left government that respected civil liberties.

In the following decades, many of Freidmans and other right-wing libertarian ideas were applied by governments from Beijing to Pretoria. But far from creating a free-market utopia, we live in a world that provides fewer opportunities for the majority than in the 1970s. A World Inequality Database report released in 2021 conclusively showed that rising incomes for the super-rich have been directly accompanied by lowered social mobility for the impoverished and middle classes.

As inequality and impoverishment reach new heights, even the former middle classes are finding themselves both overworked and less socially mobile, which can be seen in rising levels of depression and anxiety. Rather than a world of open borders and free minds, we are increasingly encircled by what political theorist William I Robinson called the global police state of surveillance and growing walls.

Friedman believed that Homo economicus a person motivated entirely by profit with no interest beyond accumulation was the glorious end point of all historical endeavour. But, despite marketers and media influencers claiming we have more choice than ever, the grim social conditions of the 2020s feel like a cage surrounded by blaring video billboards that pacify us with false images of unattainable luxury and autonomy.

Chamayou began his book in the early 1970s. Across both the Global North and South, radical reforms and social interventions to regulate capitalism had resulted in rising living standards. This increased pressure on social power structures brought on calls for more radical, direct democracy. From decolonial movements to feminisms refusal of male despostism over women, the era was defined by a new sense of emerging human freedom, and of shared collective and individual emancipation.

But from the perspective of corporate managers and politicians, it was seen as an attack on the entire socioeconomic order. Marshalling a huge web of documentation, from the reports of conservative think tanks to the internal memos of business people who felt their staff was becoming too unruly, Chamayou makes the compelling argument that the neoliberal shift was fuelled by a sense of crisis among elites.

Their tactical response was two-pronged. It entailed pushing for new monetarist policies to restore the power of capital, through lowering taxes, undermining unions and chipping away at social safety networks. By making life harder for working people, it was believed, they would be dissuaded from the popular radicalism that the social revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s had brought about. Ideological indoctrination sustained this new direction. Anti-corporate campaigners had given big business a bad name, by exposing its complicity in the crimes of the Vietnam War, support for the apartheid government in South Africa and many other explotative practices. In response, corporate marketers and politicians such as Margaret Thatcher presented capitalism as a radical force opposed to the cold bureaucracy and ossified forms of state control. They took the popular ideals of freedom and hollowed them out, reducing them to the limited scope of economic choice.

This idea of freedom was a pretext for growing authoritarianism. Chamayou demonstrates that workers have consistently seen the disappearance of workplace democracy and must now endure extended working hours, reduced salaries and intensified surveillance in factories and offices.

In his book, Jeffries explores how this ideological shift was accompanied by postmodernism. The term is often seen as a boogeyman the Right claims it means a nihilistic rejection of traditional values, and many leftists have interpreted it as an attack on the values of social progress.

Jeffries demystifies both these approaches. He shows that postmodernism emerged in the 1970s as a suspicion of grand narratives, with a focus rather on flippancy, change and play. For example, the architecture of public housing schemes was seen as cold and inhumane, leading to calls for developers to learn from the colour and energy of commercial advertising in cities like Las Vegas. Pop icon David Bowie showed that identity and personality were fluid by changing appearance in each album. Hip-hop, which emerged from the decaying urban conditions of New York in the late 1970s, used the technique of sampling old songs to create the future sound of music.

But these benign experiments disguised how the Right and capital benefitted from postmodernism because it also brought about the sense that innovation is no longer possible, that there is nothing beyond the consumer economies of today. This has allowed the Right to normalise neoliberalism as the only viable way to organise society. Even if we feel nothing works and that we live in an ever-worsening corporate dystopia, we are constantly reminded that there is no alternative.

But as both these engaging and richly detailed works show, neoliberalism is a historical and political project that is only a few decades old. It is not an unassailable fortress, but a flimsy ideological construction that, as the recent rejection of the Pinochet-era Constitution in Chile shows, can be contested.

The revolts of the 1960s showed that rather than creating an opposition between personal freedom and social justice, improved conditions increased the scope of individual liberty. The Left needs to reclaim the concept of freedom from the Right and advance a vision of human emancipation that shows neoliberalism to be the authoritarian mirage it is.

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Book Review | The illusion of freedom - newframe.com

The One Free Press Coalition Publishes Its January 2022 "10 Most Urgent" List

The January 2022 10 Most Urgent List Highlights Dire State of Press Freedom in China

NEW YORK January 4, 2022 Hong Kong media entrepreneur and democracy advocate Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, who is currently serving a 20-month prison sentence while awaiting trial on national security and fraud charges,tops the January rankingof the One Free Press Coalitions 10 Most Urgent list ofpress freedom cases. The 10 Most Urgent list, issued this week by a united group of pre-eminent editors and publishers, spotlights journalists whose press freedoms are being suppressed or whose cases are seeking justice.

Ahead of the 2022 Winter Olympics, set to take place in Beijing, China, this months list places a spotlight on the dire state of press freedom in China. Throughout 2021, China continued its dangerous record of imprisoning and detaining journalists without consequence, as well as weaponizing surveillance andphysically threateningjournalists in an attempt to censor them. According toCPJs 2021 census, China remains the worlds worst jailer of journalists for the third year in a row, with 50 currently behind bars.

Last year also marked a new concerning trend for the country, with the list including journalists held in Hong Kong for the first time since CPJ started collecting data in 1992.

Published Monday atwww.onefreepresscoalition.comand by all Coalition members, the 35th10 Most Urgent list includes the following journalists, ranked in order of urgency:

1.Jimmy Lai Chee-ying

Hong Kong media entrepreneur and democracy advocate Jimmy Lai Chee-ying is serving a 20-month prison sentence, while also awaiting trial on national security and fraud charges, facing a potential life sentence. Lai founded Next Digital Limited, a media company that published the pro-democracy newspaperApple DailyandNext Magazine, both forced to close in 2021 due to pressure and ongoing threats from authorities.

2.Zhang Zhan

It has been over one year since the independent journalist was sentenced to four years in prison for picking quarrels and provoking trouble after publishing videos critical of the governments Covid-19 response. She has been on an ongoing hunger strike behind bars and is now in critically ill health.

3.Ilham Tohti

Uighur writer, blogger, and scholar Ilham Tohti is serving a life sentence on charges of separatism. He is the founder of the Uighur news website Uighurbiz, which was published in Chinese and Uighur, and focused onUighur rights andsocial issues and has been denied freedom since 2014.

4.Huang Qi

Huang Qi, publisher of the human rights news website 64 Tianwang, is serving a 12-year sentence on accusations of deliberately leaking state secrets and illegally providing state secrets to foreign countries. He is critically ill and has been denied medical treatment, as well as denied visits and communication with his mother, who is dying of cancer.

5.Wan Yiu-sing

Wan Yiu-sing, an internet radio host and commentator who covers political issues in mainland China and Hong Kong for the independent internet radio channel D100, was arrested by Hong Kong police in February. Wans arrest came amid authorities crackdown on Hong Kongs pro-democracy movement. He is being held in detention while on trial for alleged sedition and money laundering, andwas hospitalized last February due to undisclosed health issues.

6.Sophia Huang Xueqin

Chinese freelance journalist Sophia Huang Xueqin disappeared on September 19, along with labor activist Wang Jianbing, one day before she was scheduled to board a plane to the United Kingdom to study abroad. On September 27, it was reported that both had been detained for allegedly inciting subversion of state power and are being held under residential surveillance at a designated location, a form of extrajudicial detention.

7.Haze Fan

Fan is a reporter and producer covering breaking business news in China forBloomberg News, and despite no charges being brought against her, she continues to be held in pretrial detention for allegedly endangering national security.

8.Zhou Weilin

Areporter for Chinese-language human rights news website Weiquanwang, Zhou has published news and commentary on social media about labor issues and disability rights. Zhou is currently serving a sentence of three years and six months on charges of picking quarrels and provoking trouble, and he plans to appeal.

9.Gulmire Imin

Uighur journalist Gulmire Imin is serving a 19-year, 8-month prison sentence on charges of separatism, leaking state secrets and organizing an illegal demonstration. In 2009, police arrested Imin, who wrote articles critical of the government that year, and she was one of several administrators of Uighur-language web forums who were arrested after the 2009 riots in Urumqi, in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.

10.Gulchehra Hoja

After joining Radio Free Asia in the U.S.in 2001,journalist Gulchehra Hoja was sent a red notice from China, banning her from returning home. Today, members of her family have been deliberately targeted with constant government surveillance and harassment and have endured numerous detentions in retaliation to her journalism and her work at Radio Free Europe, according to Gulchehra and IWMF. Following Gulchehras interviews with escapees, prison guards and other officials,in May 2019she testified in front of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the dangers of reporting on human rights.

The One Free Press Coalition is comprised of 32 prominent international members including:AgenciaEfe; Al Jazeera Media Network,AmricaEconoma; The Associated Press; Bloomberg News; The Boston Globe; Corriere Della Sera; De Standaard; Deutsche Welle; Estado; EURACTIV; The Financial Times; Forbes; Fortune; HuffPost; India Today; Insider Inc.; Le Temps; Middle East Broadcasting Networks; Office of Cuba Broadcasting; Quartz; Radio Free Asia; Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty; Republik; Reuters; The Straits Times; Sddeutsche Zeitung; TIME; TV Azteca; Voice of America; The Washington Post;andYahoo News.

One Free Press Coalition partners with the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and the International Womens Media Foundation (IWMF) to identify the most-urgent cases for the list, which is updated and published on the first business day of every month.

The mission of the Coalition is to use the collective voices of its members which reach more than 1 billion people worldwide to stand up for journalists under attack for pursuing the truth. News organizations throughout the world can join the Coalition by emailinginfo@onefreepresscoalition.com.

Members of the public are also encouraged to join the conversation using the hashtag #OneFreePress and following developments on Twitter @OneFreePress.

One Free Press Coalition

The One Free Press Coalition every month spotlights the 10 Most Urgent journalists who press freedoms are under threat worldwide. The Coalition uses the collective voices of participating news organizations to spotlight brave journalists whose voices are being silenced or have been silenced by standing up for journalists under attack for pursuing the truth. To see the 10 Most Urgent list every month and to view a complete list of participating news organizations and supporting partners, please visitonefreepresscoalition.comor @OneFreePress on Twitter.

Contacts:

One Free Press Coalition PR:pr@onefreepresscoalition.com

Committee to Protect Journalists: Bebe Santa-Wood,press@cpj.com

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Hong Kong Media Entrepreneur Jimmy Lai Chee-Ying Tops January Ranking Of The One Free Press Coalitions 10 Most Urgent Press Freedom Cases - Forbes

HIGH POINT, N.C. (WGHP) High Point Mayor Jay Wagner did not mince words in his latest COVID-19 warning: Many in Guilford County are calling for renewed mandates to combat the current surge. I do not believe in limiting your freedom with mandates, but responsibility is the price of freedom.

The mayor is calling on the community to take additional safety precautions to prevent the spread of COVID-19s omicron variant.

The City of High Point and Guilford County have seen a dramatic increase in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations due to the new Omicron variant, Wagner said. Although evidence shows that infections from Omicron are generally less severe than the Delta variant, the greatly increased numbers of Omicron cases are putting unsustainable stress on our health care systems.Increased infection rates are also putting added stress on our first responders and public safety officers.

The mayor cites local health officials who he says predict that the latest wave of omicron cases could peak between Jan. 9 and 14

As we begin our third year fighting COVID, I recognize that many of you are weary of the fight, but now is the time to redouble our efforts in protecting ourselves, our loved ones and our community, Wagner said.

Wagner is specifically calling for the community to get vaccinated or boosted, limit large indoor gatherings, work from home if possible, wear a surgical KN-95 or N-95 mask when necessary, wash hands or use hand sanitizer often and physically distance from others whenever possible.

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Responsibility is the price of freedom; High Point mayor calls for community to take greater COVID-19 precautions as some call for renewed mandates -...

Photo: Public Domain

Jim Jordan

A crowd rose to its feet in applause at a forum last month when a man questioned GOP Congressman Jim Jordan about what he would do about the untrue assertion that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump.

Jordan was speaking at a December event hosted by the Lima Community for Medical Freedom and took questions from the crowd afterward. A man who did not share his name and identified himself as a tradesman and a Jordan voter said he wanted to ask about the elephant in the room that he hears about everyday that no politician wants to talk about.

Jordan, in his speech, had said restrictive voting laws passed in Georgia last yearand similar efforts in other states would alleviate the threat of election fraud in 2024. The man in the crowd said the issue couldnt wait.

Everybody I talk to is not satisfied with 2024, he said. Everyone I talk to thinks our election was stolen.

The crowd started to clap and rise in applause toward Jordan, who watched with a smile. He nodded along as the man said he and others saw a couple of weeks worth of evidence of fraud in swing states, according to footage of the event posted on social media.

My understanding: If someone gets caught robbing a bank, they dont get to keep the money, and if somebody stole the election, they should not be able to keep it, the man said to the congressman.

Theres no evidence of widespread election fraud. Rare, isolated incidents occur, but an Associated Press review of every potential case of voter fraud in six battleground statesdisputed by Trump amounted to fewer than 475, far short of enough mass to tip an election. Numerous audits havent detected any widespread fraud, and Trumps own attorney generaland election security directorhave said theres no reason to believe the election was stolen.

Regardless, recent polling shows Republicans share a lingering belief that the election was stolen. An ABC News/Ipsos poll released Sunday found 71% of Republicans believe Trump won the election. A CBS News/YouGov poll, also released Sunday, found 12% of Americans believe Trump should fight to be made president right now.

When Jordan responded to the question, he neither confirmed nor denied the mans claim of election fraud. Instead, he laid out a three-point outlook for 2024. For one, he said, people are watching. For two, he cited Georgias new law, specifically a provision requiring voters to show state-issued identification to cast an absentee ballot (current law allows them to do so with just a signature). Thirdly, Jordan said Republicans should file lawsuits as soon as you see them start to play games a reference to states expanding use of drop boxes during the COVID-19 pandemic.

He also called on Congress to investigate what happened in 2020.

I havent said anything other than, I want to check it out, he said. Because there are lots of Americans, including Democrats, who have big concerns about what happened in the election, and thats why I said, lets figure it out.

Jordan has repeatedly used his official powers and media profile to amplify Trumps election lies. Hours after the Jan. 6 insurrection, heand 146 other GOP congressmenvoted to overturn the results in Arizona and Pennsylvania key battleground states. He spoke at a stop the steal rallyin Pennsylvania after the election and issued official letterscalling for investigations and alleging the existence of irregularities and improprieties and election errors and misconduct.

Congressional investigators, meanwhile, recently released text messages Jordan sent to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadowsjust before the Jan. 6 insurrection. At the hearing, U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., read a part of a text message he said an unspecified lawmaker sent to Meadows on Jan. 5. Jordans officeconfirmed to CNN that he sent the text message to Meadows, forwarding on legal advice that had been sent to him.

On January 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence, as President of the Senate, should call out all electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all in accordance with guidance from founding father Alexander Hamilton and judicial precedence, the full text Jordan reportedly sent to Meadows, obtained by CNN, states.

No legislative act, wrote Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 78, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid. The court in Hubbard v. Lowe reinforced this truth: That an unconstitutional statute is not a law at all is a proposition no longer open to discussion. 226 F. 135, 137 (SDNY 1915), appeal dismissed, 242 U.S. 654 (1916). Following this rationale, an unconstitutionally appointed elector, like an unconstitutionally enacted statute, is no elector at all.

Jordans spokesman did not respond to emails regarding the CNN report or the standing ovation.

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Jim Jordan's Election Lies Get Standing Ovation at Ohio Medical Freedom Event - Cincinnati CityBeat

In a 12 June 2021 judgment,(1) the high court ruled on whether the defendant company had breached its duty to negotiate the holiday schedule and, consequently, had violated the unions' right to freedom of association.

The case arose after a company agreed with the trade unions before the Interconfederal Mediation and Arbitration Service (SIMA) on 8 June 2020 that the holiday schedule for 2021 would be established before 31 December 2020.

However, without any prior negotiation with the workers' legal representatives, the company informed its employees on 12 March 2021 of the dates in which paid leave would have to be taken in 2021.

As a result, the unions filed many collective dispute claims, wherein they requested the annulment of the 2021 holiday notice that had been sent by the company to the workforce.

The unions believed that paid leave must be negotiated with the workers' legal representatives and that, since these proceedings had not taken place contrary to what had been agreed before the SIMA, the right to freedom of association had been infringed, specifically regarding the possibility of collective negotiation.

The court stated that the commitment that had been made by the parties before the SIMA invited both parties to negotiate the holiday schedule before 31 December 2020. In this sense, the court considered that the commitment made concerned both parties and that, since there is no evidence of the unions proposing any further negotiations, both the company and the unions were to blame for not having established a holiday schedule for 2021.

In addition, the high court stated that:

negotiating does not necessarily require an agreement be reached, but rather that consultations are established between the parties in good faith with the objective of achieving a solution to any given dispute.

Therefore, the court concluded that the holiday schedule set by the company was valid, and that there had not been an infringement of the fundamental right to freedom of association as regards the possibility of collective negotiation. Therefore, the trade unions should not receive compensation.

On this basis, the high court dismissed the claims brought by the unions and acquitted the company of the claims brought against it.

For further information on this topic please contact Elena Esparza or Mara Jos Ramosat CMS Albiana & Suarez de Lezo by telephone (+34 91 451 9300) or email ([emailprotected] and [emailprotected]). The CMS Albiana & Suarez de Lezo website can be accessed at http://www.cms.law.

Endnotes

(1) ES:AN:2021:2762.

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Court rules on right to freedom of association - Lexology

Much ink has been spilled recently about the alleged failure of universities to defend academic freedom against identity politics gone mad. The Cloutier Commission has recommended legislation, and many are arguing that only with a law can universities withstand the scourge that is wreaking havoc on Qubec campuses.

At the risk of disappointing those who want to bring universities to heel (in violation of the academic independence that the Cloutier Commission embraced as a fundamental principle), we would argue that the reality is more complex. University campuses are not on fire and legislation would not be a panacea.

From February to May 2021, Universit de Montral conducted a broad consultation and collective reflection on freedom of expression in the context of the university. At the conclusion of this process, the University Assembly unanimously adopted a statement of principles and specific recommendations on how to reaffirm our communitys commitment to academic freedom as a fundamental value, communicate it and act on it. Among other things, the statement of principles holds that no word, concept, image or work can be categorically excluded from debate and critical examination in the course of university teaching and research. In short, we have been doing our job on this issue.

What emerged from our discussions is that there are real differences of opinion on academic freedom but the debate should not be overdramatized and academic freedom should not be conceived from only one side.

First of all, the numbers must be put in perspective. One figure that has been cited repeatedly since the Cloutier Commissions survey was released is that 60 per cent of faculty say they practice self-censorship in the classroom. It would be more accurate to report that 60 per cent of the 1,079 respondents to the survey (which was sent to 33,516 faculty members) said so. Given the low response rate of 3.2 per cent, the results must be interpreted with caution.

Most importantly, our consultation at Universit de Montral pointed to a wide range of situations in which the question of academic freedom arises in many shadings, which are missing from the Cloutier report. To begin with, freedom of expression at a university is not a one-way street. Teachers (lecturers, teaching assistants, tenured professors) came forward to relate difficult experiences and being challenged in the classroom. At the same time, students spoke of being attacked, of feeling distress in the classroom and relative relief when they could attend their courses online. On both sides, people lamented the fact that concrete issues of racism and sexism are not treated as conscientiously as often-abstractly posed questions of academic freedom, particularly the freedom of faculty members.

Should the classroom be a safe space? The expression seems to raise hackles. So lets call it a space of trust, under the responsibility and authority of the teacher, and of academic or administrative officials when appropriate. The process of developing a critical relationship to knowledge cannot leave unasked the question of who can speak in the classroom. Our consultations showed that ways to dial down or resolve crises were most often found locally, on the ground, taking into account the power relationships and opposed interests in play.

And academic freedom isnt just about what happens in the classroom the sole focus of the Cloutier report and the hot-button of media coverage. It is something that is played out in university departments, in peer relationships (between students, between teachers), in pressures from external groups on university research and its dissemination, in comments on social networks, in the intellectual give-and-take of campus life, in researchers media appearances and scientific publications. The issues are at once broader and less contentious than the way they are being depicted today.

The limits of academic freedom are indeed a matter of debate at Universit de Montral, as at other Qubec universities. Will a law change this? No. Will it enable university administrations to better support the people facing these challenges? No. At the end of the day, that is the important question: how can we help everyone, teachers and students, express themselves without censorship while maintaining a genuine dialogue between people who disagree? We believe the answer lies much more in the ethical and pedagogical realm than in the legal arena. On the other hand, would a law undermine the principle of university independence by imposing restrictions that strike at the very heart of academic life? It certainly would.

Daniel Jutras is Professor of Law and Rector of Universit de Montral; Valrie Amiraux is Professor of Sociology and Vice-Rector, Community and International Partnerships, Universit de Montral; and Jean-Franois Gaudreault-Desbiens is Professor of Law and Vice-Rector, Strategic Planning and Communication, Universit de Montral

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Opinion: When it comes to academic freedom, universities haven't been asleep at the switch - CTV News Montreal

Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu on Tuesday said that citizens should exercise freedom of expression with the decency of language and discipline of words, as he virtually addressed a gathering at the Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi Vishvavidyalay in Maharashtras Wardha district.

The vice president unveiled the statue of B R Ambedkar and inaugurated Atal Bihari Vajpayee Bhavan and Chandrashekhar Azad hostel located in the varsity premises.

He also said that it is expected from civilised society that its language is gentle, cultured and creative.

Let us exercise our freedom of expression with the decency of language and discipline of words. Our writings should be good for society. It is expected from civilised society that its language is gentle, cultured and creative, Naidu said.

Sanskars and literary writings of a university should inculcate civilised conversation, not conflict, he said.

According to Naidu one should use freedom of expression keeping the dignity of language.

After a long debate, the Constituent Assembly accepted Hindi as the official language and a constitutional status was accorded to other Indian languages in the Eighth Schedule, Naidu said.

We are fortunate to have linguistic diversity in our country. Our linguistic diversity is our strength, as our languages symbolise our cultural unity, he said, adding that every Indian language has a glorious history and rich literature.

The vice president said that for Mahatma Gandhi, the question of language was a question of national unity. He further explained that even after insisting on Hindi, the Mahatma understood the sensitivity of every citizen towards his mother tongue and believed that no language should be imposed on anyone.

For Mahatma, the question of language was very important for the unity of the nation. He was of the view that without rashtrabhasha (national language), the country is deaf. All Indian languages have a proud history and rich literature. The diversity in our languages is our strength, he said.

The New Education Policy 2020 follows the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. It also proposes the use of mother tongue in primary and middle school level, Naidu said.

He further said that literature of other Indian languages should also be made available online with the Hindi translation, and suggested that the language departments of universities can play an important role in this regard.

The Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi Vishvavidyalay in Wardha teaches foreign languages such as French, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese etc. in Hindi medium.

Expressing happiness over this, Naidu called for extending this facility for other Indian languages too, so that Hindi students can also learn other Indian languages.

See the article here:

Exercise freedom of expression with decency of language, discipline of words: V-P Venkaiah Naidu - The Indian Express