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Category Archives: Free Speech

Ari and Mohammed are now friends

March 7, 2010 – 4:04 am

The Israeli military cancelled a planned raid on a Palestinian village after one of its soldiers posted details of the operation on Facebook.
The unnamed soldier revealed the time and place of the raid and the name of his unit on the social networking site. He said on his status update that his unit planned a [...]

By DeusExMacintosh | Also posted in Fark!, Funnies, Internet, Law, Middle east, Politics, Religion | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (12)

Sunday Funnie and Open Discussion Thread

February 22, 2010 – 2:30 am

Iran’s supreme leader has denied it is developing nuclear weapons, after a new report from the UN atomic watchdog, the IAEA, sparked an international outcry.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said any fears were “baseless” as Iranians’ beliefs “bar us from using such weapons”.
The blunt report raised concerns Iran was working on nuclear weapons.
Russia said it was “very [...]

By DeusExMacintosh | Also posted in Blogging, Funnies, General | Comments (10)

Amnesty’s slow burn

February 15, 2010 – 6:30 am

This story has been something of a slow burn over here, but it’s starting to gain a bit of momentum now, to the stage where the implications are actually pretty awful:
A SENIOR official at Amnesty International has accused the charity of putting the human rights of Al-Qaeda terror suspects above those of their victims.
Gita Sahgal, [...]

By skepticlawyer | Also posted in England, Feminism, Human/Civil rights, Law, Middle east | Tagged , , , , | Comments (31)

Political correctness on campus

January 21, 2010 – 8:36 pm

Via a friend, I came across this interesting piece on political correctness on US university campuses. The author starts out with a salutary tale:
In 2007 a student working his way through college was found guilty of racial harassment for reading a book in public. Some of his co-workers had been offended by the book’s cover, [...]

By Legal Eagle | Also posted in Academia, Education, Human/Civil rights, Literature, Personal liberty, Politics, Racism, Society | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (43)

Bloggers, journalists and the law

January 15, 2010 – 6:08 pm

Richard Ackland has an interesting piece in the SMH on the laws protecting journalists versus the laws protecting bloggers, with some thoughts about the blurred line between journalism and blogging as well. He says:
Justice William Gummow of the High Court asked the question last year during an appeal in Ray Chesterton’s defamation action against 2UE: [...]

By Legal Eagle | Also posted in Blogging, Law, Media, Popular culture, Society | Comments (6)

You wouldn’t read about it

January 12, 2010 – 5:14 am

A Muslim protester accused of calling soldiers murderers at a parade claims he did not intend to upset anyone. Munim Abdul told Luton magistrates he did not expect to cause offence because his group had spoken “the truth”.
Seven men deny using threatening, abusive or insulting words and behaviour likely to cause harassment, alarm and distress. [...]

By DeusExMacintosh | Also posted in England, Fark!, Funnies, History, Immigration, Law, Politics, Religion | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (11)

Wowsers are Winning

December 15, 2009 – 8:40 pm

Here at Skepticlawyer we’re shocked to see that the wowsers have apparently won the battle over compulsory internet censorship. The Age reports:
The Federal Government has announced it will proceed with controversial plans to censor the internet after Government-commissioned trials found filtering a blacklist of banned sites was accurate and would not slow down the internet.
But [...]

By Legal Eagle | Also posted in Blogging, Human/Civil rights, Internet, Law, Media, Personal liberty, Politics, Public Policy, Society | Tagged , , | Comments (24)

Confidence and privacy

December 7, 2009 – 9:46 am

I went to an interesting seminar the other day on breach of confidence law. The seminar included a number of speakers and spanned Australian, UK and US law on the subject, as well as a historical consideration of the piecemeal manner in which breach of confidence law developed.
Apparently breach of confidence was a relative latecomer [...]

By Legal Eagle | Also posted in Academia, Equity, Intellectual property, Law, Media, Privacy, Public Policy | Tagged , , , , | Comments (2)

Denialism and moral equivalence

November 21, 2009 – 7:13 pm

Clive Hamilton wrote a piece for Crikey earlier this week in which he likened those who deny climate change to those who deny the Holocaust. He said:
We think of Holocaust deniers as being immoral because we suspect them of being motivated by anti-Semitism or a desire for political advancement through stirring up racial hatred.
We think [...]

By Legal Eagle | Also posted in Environment, Politics | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (51)

Here we go, here we go, here we go

October 23, 2009 – 7:12 am

Yes, it’s on again, the annual UK BNP blow-up. This time it’s the BBC, and not the Oxford Union. Memo to the ‘anti-fascist league’ or whatever you call yourselves these days:
1. Preventing these people from speaking will not make them go away.
2. Behaving badly while the loonies behave politely will make the greater British public [...]

By skepticlawyer | Also posted in England, Politics, Racism | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (19)