Posted in libertarianism, tagged blogs, death penalty, fear, freedom of speech, fundamentalism, intolerance, iran, laws, moral legislation, religion, religious fundamentalism on July 6, 2008 | No Comments »
Iran’s parliament is discussing a bill which would make “establishing weblogs and sites promoting corruption, prostitution or apostasy” a crime punishable by death. The bill also stipulates that once awarded, the sentence “cannot be commuted, suspended or changed”.
More here.
As a morally corrupt (certainly by Iranian standards!), prostitution-advocating libertarian and atheist who delves into all these matters in his posts , I wonder [...]
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Posted in miscellaneous, tagged freedom of speech, global warming, science, crime, rhetoric, nature, gas, energy, oil, humanity, ceo, fuels, fossil energy, james hansen on June 25, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Inflammatory rhetoric from doomsday-sayers isn’t anything new; nevertheless this statement by climatologist James Hansen strikes me as extreme.
Special interests have blocked transition to our renewable energy future. Instead of moving heavily into renewable energies, fossil companies choose to spread doubt about global warming, as tobacco companies discredited the smoking-cancer link. Methods are sophisticated, including disguised [...]
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Posted in India, libertarianism, politics, tagged freedom of speech, censorship, offended feelings, defamation, laws, sonia gandhi, information technology act on June 23, 2008 | 3 Comments »
This is a disturbing and stark reminder of how much India lags behind the US in free speech.
The cyber cell of the Pune police on Saturday arrested one more suspect for allegedly uploading obscene and derogatory text about Congress chief Sonia Gandhi on a social networking site.
The suspect has been identified as Nithin Chakravarti Suresh Sajja (22) [...]
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(Updated 13/6)
In response to an emailed comment by a certain reader, I feel it is appropriate to clarify my stand on free speech.
I frequently say I believe in complete freedom of speech, no hate-speech exceptions, etc. However when I say complete freedom of speech, I use the term only to refer to expressed opinions. My stand [...]
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Posted in libertarianism, tagged freedom of speech, freedom, censorship, offended feelings, laws, ezra levant, hate speech, canada, human rights commission, mark steyn, slippery slope, alberta, tribunal, ruling, macleans on June 11, 2008 | No Comments »
One of the many good arguments libertarians and other advocates of complete free speech offer in support of their position is the slippery-slope argument. Basically, once you restrict certain types of speech, the bar is lowered and the censorship gets more and more oppressive with the passage of time. The result is a slow but [...]
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“Against the argument that you cannot cry fire in a crowded theatre: Oh yes you can — you must, if in your considered view there is a fire. In that case there is a duty to cry fire.”
-Julian Porter, QC, speaking in favour of free speech at a certain Kangaroo court.
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Posted in people, tagged harry potter, rowling, freedom of speech, democracy, speech, amnesty, harvard, due process, totalitarian, regimes on June 8, 2008 | No Comments »
One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my [...]
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Posted in libertarianism, politics, tagged freedom of speech, civil liberties, election 2008, government, mccain, privacy, security, wiretapping, terrorism, war, executive power, fourth amendment, telecom on June 4, 2008 | No Comments »
I have always feared that if elected, John McCain would be an even more authoritarian chief executive than George W. Bush. Particularly worrying is his disregard for privacy and free speech, especially when it conflicts (in his world-view) with national security.
The latest statement issued by McCain’s campaign proves that these fears are justified. Here’s an excerpt:
N]either the Administration nor the telecoms need [...]
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“I disapprove of what you say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.”
- Voltaire (as paraphrased by Evelyn Beatrice Hall).
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Posted in India, libertarianism, tagged freedom of speech, censorship, gujarat, criticism, free speech, terrorism, sedition, times of india, mathur, newspaper on June 2, 2008 | No Comments »
From the TOI pages:
The city police have registered a case of sedition and conspiracy against The Times of India, the editor of its Ahmedabad edition, a correspondent and a photographer on the basis of a complaint from the newly-appointed city police commissioner, O P Mathur.
Mathur’s complaint comes in response to a series of documented investigative reports [...]
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In my last post I linked to a video of the Human Rights Commision of Canada getting its ass kicked by Ezra Levant. At that time I’d forgotten that Dean Steacy, of the remarkable exchange below, is one of the investigators of the same commission.
MS KULASZKA: Mr. Steacy, you were talking before about context and how [...]
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Posted in libertarianism, tagged canada, cartoons, danish, discrimination, ezra levant, fee speech, freedom of speech, hate speech, islam, laws, liberty, offended feelings, rights on June 1, 2008 | No Comments »
OMG, this is so awesome!
But a little bit of background first. Ezra Levant is the publisher of Western Standard, a right-wing Canadian magazine. I quote from Glenn Greenwald’s post on Salon, where I first came across the video that appears next.
In February, 2006, he published the Danish Mohammed cartoons, which prompted an Islamic group’s imam to file a complaint against Levant [...]
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Posted in libertarianism, tagged freedom of speech, liberty, freedom of expression, legalization, netherlands, dutch, cartoonist, cartoons, islam on May 23, 2008 | 2 Comments »
The Dutch got it once. So they legalized abortion, prostitution, soft drugs and euthanasia and guaranteed absolute free speech. But isn’t there an old proverb about not seeing the value of things you’ve had for a long while? It seems the famously easy-going Dutch are tired of their freedoms. What else to make of the ban on magic mushrooms, and now the arrest [...]
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Posted in libertarianism, people, tagged freedom of speech, liberty, freedom of expression, violence, karen fletcher, obscenity, first amendment, laws, writing, artistic freedom, court, gulity, agoraphobia, stories, fiction, child pornography, sexual, trial on May 21, 2008 | No Comments »
Remember Karen Fletcher? The woman in the centre of the high-profile obscenity case I wrote about earlier? The reclusive lady who wrote violent sexual stories involving children in an attempt to cope with her own history of child abuse and was subsequently hounded by federal prosecuters? Well, the matter’s come to an end.
She battled the federal government’s allegations [...]
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Posted in libertarianism, tagged copyright, freedom, freedom of speech, intellectual property, laws, liberty, neil nataniel, paradox, patent, property, property rights, volokh on May 15, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Intellectual property laws, such as those relating to copyright or patents, are a source of considerable disagreement among libertarians. The reason is not hard to see. In the words of Rodrick Long,
When libertarians of the first sort come across a purported intellectual property right, they see one more instance of an individual’s rightful claim to [...]
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