A brief chronological Compendium of a Few Banned or Challenged Works, and Censorship and Anti-Censorship Efforts 01 Jan - 30 Jun 2007

One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison; anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny. --Bertrand Russell

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2007, January 01: The signalling of a penchant for government secrecy

By Idaho Governor-elect C.L. Otter. By holding his swearing in ceremony in secrecy; behind closed doors; specifically out of all view of any witnesses except family. By law, Idaho's governor is sworn in on the first Monday in the New Year; in this case, on Monday, 01 Jan itself. The inauguration is usually a few days later. Mr. Otter's taking of the offical oath behind closed doors breaks a tradition of public oaths for perhaps the first time in the history of the state. The Governor-elect, a former Republican congressman and lieutenant governor, snubbed a request from Associated Press to allow one representative from the Idaho news media to attend as public witness. Jon Hanian, a spokesman for Mr. Otter, said publicly on 27 Dec: "It's not trying to be exclusive. It's not trying to rope anybody out. That's just the way he wants it and that's the way it's going to be." The governor's office has scheduled a reenactment of the swearing-in ceremony as part of the public inauguration celebration on the Capitol steps on 05 Jan.

Allen Derr, a lawyer for the Idaho Press Club and who specializes in open-meetings law, said the move could violate the First Amendemnt. He commented:

• "I don't see any grounds for them to do it. It may not fit exactly in the open-meetings law, but the theory and practice makes it a public event and it should be open to the public -- it's the official assumption of the office."

• "The public ceremony is fluff. That's pomp and circumstance. All public business must be conducted in public and (the oath) is public business."

Jim Weatherby, an emeritus professor of public policy at Boise State University, illuminated the key point to this action: "As one of the first official acts of the new governor, I would expect him to be more open than he is showing. It does send a message as to how open his administration will be, whether intended or not."

[Harken to the note of arrogance in Hanian's summation of the decision: "That's just the way he wants it and that's the way it's going to be". Basically: I'm the governor, I'm in charge, I'm not accountable to any grubby voters or tax-payers. This might very well not be the case, but this action does establish a precedent for the tone of Otter's administrative style that is in keeping with the worst of the Republican style. --MN]

By Peter Hedges. A Carroll school district review committee voted 5-3 to recommend that the school district reinstate this book to the curriculum and to keep it in the school library. The committee of eight was formed of district employees, community members, and students. Some committee members did agree that the novel has objectionable sexual content, but also said that many reluctant readers might relate to the characters.
(see 25 Nov 2006)

By the Federal Bureau of Investigation. See the entry on the Bush censorship page.

By Jon Weiner; protagonist in the John Lennon/Nixon/COINTELPRO Affair. In this piece, he examines how materials that have been declassified will not necessarily be released for public consumption. He wrote in part:

On December 31 at midnight, hundreds of millions of pages of secret government documents were automatically declassified — the result of President Bush's Executive Order on Declassification, which covers all national security documents 25 years old or older.

[...]

But if you called the National Archives on Wednesday, as I did (it was closed Tuesday for the national day of mourning for President Ford), you would have been told that none of these newly declassified documents are available — and won't be, maybe for years.

Automatic declassification is a wonderful idea. "Our democratic principles require that the American people be informed of the activities of their Government" — that's what President Clinton wrote when he ordered 25-year automatic declassification in 1995. The target date for compliance was extended several times, but then, in 2003, Bush surprised his critics by setting a firm deadline. Over the years, some documents were released in anticipation of the deadline.

But the obstacles to actually seeing the vast majority of these documents anytime soon are huge. Declassification, it turns out, is not the same as release.

The order by President Bush stipulates nine exemptions by which documents cannot be released, and some of them, such as provisions for privacy or confidentiality of sources for law enforcement (now isn't that ironic), appear to be restrictions reasonable as to time, place, or manner. Others have no other purpose than to be obstructionist. In particular:

The last phrase, "referral to other government agencies" sounds benign but in fact provides a huge loophole. The Justice Department, for example, reported that in 2006 it reviewed 57 million pages, of which 11 million — 20% — were declassified, while 46 million pages, or 80%, were referred to other agencies.

Virtually all important documents involve multiple agencies. If you wanted to look, say, at Reagan-era memos about U.S. support for Saddam Hussein, those meetings probably involved the CIA, the National Security Council and the Defense and State departments. If even one of those agencies wanted to withhold a document, it would be withheld. (There is a deadline for the processing of the material that has been referred to other agencies — three more years.)

The greatest obstruction, however, is the bottleneck of the National Archives; declassified documents are sent there to be made available to the public. This agency is reported to be backlogged by 400 million pages already. And it has just suffered a round of budget cuts.

[I wonder how that would work; would the delay be for three years as each agency would probably be petitioned at the same time, or three years per agency. Supposing, solely for example, there is a document from an intelligence briefing. Release could be delayed by three years by the CIA before being sent for approval by the NSC which would then send it on to the DOD (6 yrs), which would forward it after approval to the State Department (9 yrs), which might finally approve it for release; after 12 years from the initial request. The former scenario makes the most sense, but given what Mr. Weiner wrote above, the latter appears to actually be the case. And I wouldn't put it past an obstructionist regime like Bush's to require approval by one agency at a time. Given how far behind the National Archives are, however, I also wouldn't put it past Bush to have been whispered to that it would be just as well to release this huge mass of documents and to then cut the budget for the office that must inventory and catalogue them. --MN]

By Steve Marquardt, Ph.D. See the entry on the Cuban Independent Librarians page.

By Alice Sebold. This book, held by the Coleytown Middle School library, was reviewed as the result of a request by the parent of a 6th-grade girl. The parent said it was right for an adult audience but inappropriate for middle school students. The school system's challenged materials committee recommended that it be retained, and Westport Public Schools Superintendent Elliott Landon supported that decision on this day. The Lovely Bones, is a story narrated from heaven by a 14-year-old girl who was raped and murdered. Superintendent Landon wrote in part, that it is still appropriate for middle school students, "many of whom possess the maturity level to read this book." He also pointed out in his letter that students had requested the book.

[It's nice to see a school official actually respect the intelligence and capability of students. --MN]

By the police of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. See the anti-Bush sentiment suppression timeline.

By the Colorado Supreme Court. Shareef Aleem was given a 45-day jail sentence for appearing in court wearing a T-shirt depicting the executed Stanley "Tookie" Williams, co-founder of the Crips gang. He was ordered to remove the shirt and refused; reportedly as well as engaging in other misconduct. Mr. Aleem told the trial judge the shirt had political and religious significance. On this day, the state supreme court overturned that sentence; not out of any free speech concerns, but citing procedural errors by the trial judge. The justices said in In Re People v. Aleem that wearing a shirt bearing a political message in a courtroom is not protected under the First Amendment.

[I mention this here because it raises some very interesting questions about using a courtroom as a political or religious forum. In the U.S., the government is divided into three branches; Executive, Legislative, and Judicial. In an effort to protect due process and civil liberties, the Judicial branch is protected by Judicial Independence. The executive can veto a law, and the legislative can vote to overturn that veto, and either can propose and lobby for laws. Both are forbidden to meddle with the judicary, however, and likewise, the courts cannot summarily call those branches to account; indeed, the American judiciary cannot alter or repeal laws which it rules against. One could argue, therefore, that the courtroom is not an appropriate milieu for political protest, because, even while it is a part of the political system, it is outside the political process. Against that, however, are older court rulings disallowing the harrassment of defendants or visitors to courthouses for wearing gang colours or clothing. --MN]

By the U.S. presidency. See the entry on the Bush censorship page.

By Laura Mallory. See the Harry Potter censorship timeline.

By Spocko. A self-described "fifth-tier" web journaler living in San Francisco, he is reported to exemplify how one person with a computer and internet access can challenge the views of a major media corporation, and what that corporation will do to silence him. Spocko is a hobby web logger; his political and media criticism blog gets 15 hits a day, he says, and has no advertisers. He also described himself as a communications professional, but not as a journalist. Nor does he work for KSFO or any competitor. Most of the clips he circulated were extracted from a morning drive-time show co-hosted by Melanie Morgan and Lee Rodgers, and an evening program hosted by Brian Sussman.

A little over a year ago he became irritated enough by the tone of commentary, and he and some of his readers contacted more than thirty-six of the station's advertisers. Spocko wrote: "I want to emphasize that if you withdraw your ads you aren't limiting their free speech, just removing your paid support of it." After receiving the "head's up!" about the station's content, Bank of America reviewed other programming on the station and eventually pulled its advertising. MasterCard, in its turn, decided to no longer advertise on Brian Sussman's show. As well, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation asked its ad buyer to exclude KSFO-AM if it should purchase time on the ABC network.

Disney/ABC-owned KSFO launched a counter-attack shortly before Christmas. A lawyer for ABC demanded the removal of the audio clips from Spocko's journal on the grounds they violate copyright. He removed them, but the action rebounded to the detriment of KSFO-AM. The clips were then distributed over the internet by others, including being made accessible at YouTube as part of a video; which reportedly drew 31,000 hits within days. Defenders of free speech have also countered that Spocko's use of the materials on his web journal constituted fair use. Matt Zimmerman, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation commented: "This is prototypical fair use of copyrighted material. Bloggers shouldn't have to be worried about being sued every time they post a screen shot from 'The Simpsons.'" EFF is not representing Spocko, but has reviewed his situation and is monitoring it.

[See the source article for more background. It seems that some of the things said might be defensible as explained by Morgan, that would sound hateful in the context of the right-wing broadcasts. See my commentary on the issue of being a citizen journalist. --MN]

By the Riverbank Unified School District, California. School administrators here have banned clothing featuring the name of Mac Dre, a rapper who glorified drug use in his music. He popularized the slang term "to thizz" to describe being high on ecstasy, and was murdered in 2004, in Kansas City, Missouri. Principal Ken Geisick is reported to have said that no Riverbank High School student has been disciplined for having or using ecstasy in the last four years and Mac Dre clothing showing images of the rapper smoking marijuana are rare on campus; officials are simply trying "to stay ahead of the game". Students are still allowed to wear clothing with the images of other artists associated with drug use, but Mac Dre clothes are banned because that is what's popular at the moment. Other phrases and brands on the banned list:

• eight ball,
• Joe Camel,
• Nor Cal,
• Rolling Hard,
• Sol Beer,
• south pole, and
• vato loco.

Some of these are prohibited because of gang affiliation.

[Sure stinks like censorship to me; they don't even seem to have just cause for this action under Hazelwood, as Geisick obliquely admitted that there are no tensions concerning these issues. --MN]

By Cobb County Schoolboard. On this day an ACLU newsletter e-mail announced that Cobb County and ACLU of Georgia have reached an agreement to keep "Evolution Disclaimer" stickers out of biology textbooks in public schools. The officials also agreed not to take other actions undermining the teaching of evolution in biology classes. This brings this particular movement to a close.

[The sticker read: This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered. If people who advocate this kind of anti-intellectualism were actually in favour of fair and balanced viewpoints, they would require similar stickers put into bibles: This supposed holy writ contains material on creation. Creationism is dogma, not fact, regarding the origin of living things. . . . --MN]
(see 26 Sep 2002; 13 Jan 2005; 29 Jan 2005)

By Free Press. A press freedom and media reform advocacy group, it organized a conference for this day, to be held in Memphis, Tennessee. An article dated 10 Jan reported that several thousand U.S. media activists were expected to attend, and that much of the conference was to focus on current and upcoming public policy battles designed to help make the U.S. media system more democratic. Among the key issues are:

• the Federal Communications Commission's current plan to permit greater media consolidation;
• battling Congress over the broadband Internet (network neutrality);
• highlighting the lack of ownership of media outlets by women and people of color.

Jeffrey Chester, author of the article, pointed out, however, that the internet has already been subjected to the same kind of media consolidation, with ten companies garnering almost seventy-five percent of all ad revenues, and that only four companies dominate the online market. He contends that issue is as equally important as those slated to be addressed at the confernece. See the source article, Digital Media: The Next Frontier for Media Reform, for more background.

By a school board in Seattle, Washington. A school board in the Federal Way suburb of Seattle has restricted showings of Al Gore's film on global warming; it also required that it be balanced with an adequate opposing viewpoint. Board President Ed Barney told The News Tribune of Tacoma on Jan. 10 that he had received about a half-dozen complaints from parents. The board had voted on the opposing viewpoints requirement, on 09 Jan.

Indications are, from the reporting, that this action is similar to the anti-evolution movement. Frosty Hardison, a parent of seven children and who doesn't want the film shown at all, is quoted: "Condoms don't belong in school, and neither does Al Gore. He's not a schoolteacher. The information that's being presented is a very cockeyed view of what the truth is. The Bible says that in the end times everything will burn up, but that perspective isn't in the DVD." If this is so, then the vote violates the separation of church and state as the opposing viewpoints being offered are biblical in nature.

[See the source article for more background, and then see my commentary on this issue. --MN]

[Addendum (07 Feb 2007:) An article on a separate action against the film, posted to First Amendment Center, reported that the Federal Way School Board had lifted its two-week moratorium during the week of 21-27 Jan. The article stated that Federal Way board members had imposed the temporary moratorium on showings of the film as they awaited a report from the district superintendent as to whether teachers were following district policies requiring them to get films approved by their principals, and, in the case of controversial materials, point out bias and present an opposing view. This reporting is completely at odds with the report from 12 Jan and leaves me to wonder just what the hell was really going on. And newspapers wonder why nobody trusts them any more. --MN]

By the People's Republic of China. On this day the Central Propaganda Department of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television imposed new regulations that would force the media to ask permission to cover "significant historical events" or politically sensitive anniversaries. Among the areas in which media attention will be limited or censored are:

• the 90th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution of Oct 1917;
• the Anti-Rightist Campaign, Jun 1957 until 1958;
• the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76;
• and the 1989-91 collapse of the Soviet Union and its Eastern European allies.

By the American corporate press. In a piece titled Beyond the Call to Surge, the Need to Purge Our Media, published at CommonDreams.org, Danny Schecter illustrates how the U.S. press continues to serve as an uncritical mouthpiece for the government. He wrote in part:

Much of the commentary deals with him as the beleaguered leader standing strong against public opinion but doing what he feels he had to do. The subtext was you just have to admire that man. This is the very positioning his image managers cultivated.

The focus was on one man speaking to one camera, standing alone in a library, a White House room you had a sense with which he was unfamiliar, speaking to the teleprompter, reading someone else's words with as much well-practiced conviction as he could muster. The tone was reasonable because of his many claims of having listened to advice from his team and even his critics.

There was no analysis of who wrote the speech or the attitudes of his many Generals and advisors who disagreed with its thrust. There was no reminder that the Iraqi military actually opposed it. [...]

For the newscasters, this war debate is now only between the Congress and the White House. PBS ran the Democratic response by Senator Charles Durbin who explained why his plan can't work and won't work. No one else did. Most of the networks offered only one side as usual.

[...]

The substance of the speech--its assumptions, claims and policy direction was not subjected to any scrutiny. There was no analysis of likely consequences especially the threats to attack Syria and Iran. In short, there was no reporting. How is this possible on an event that had been hyped for a week and whose key tenets were well known BEFORE it was delivered?

By person or persons unknown in Iraq. Freelance journalist Khoudr Younes al-Obaidi was murdered as he returned to his home in the town of Mosul. He was a stringer for several titles, but worked mostly for Al-Diwan, the press organ of local tribes. There was no announcment of a motive for the killing.

By a site visitor. On this day a message was entered into my guestbook by a former schoolmate of Samantha Robinson, who was the high school student in 2001 who was reported to have challenged the reading of Of Mice And Men in class, supposedly because of vulgar or racist content. This reader provided information regarding Ms. Robinson and about the incident that was not reported in the Winnipeg Sun at the time. See the entry on the Samantha Robinson Affair page. Also see my correspondence with the visitor concerning the issues raised and viewpoints expounded.

By America OnLine. In an article at BizReport.com, Matthew Borghese reported that AOL has begun blocking access to the online edition of the newspaper La Nacion Cubana (The Cuban Nation). According to AOL the action was taken following "substantial complaints" from AOL members; the action involves blocking e-mailing by the paper. According to the article, an editorial in the paper says:

In the recent past, during the our seven years of printed editions, The Cuban Nation, has been maligned, vetoed in businesses, institutions and, prohibited in libraries. Even it's distributors have been threatened as part of a campaign that continues (even today) against our advertisers.

[...]

In the age of electronic editions, the access of journalists and personnel has been censured already in newspapers like El Nuevo Herald, television stations like WSVN, Miami channel 7 and the state of Florida legislature, among others.

We are sorry that now a huge conglomerate of companies like Time Warner, proprietor of AOL, Time Inc., Time Warner Cable, Home Box Office, New Line Cinema, Turner Broadcasting System and Warner Bros opt to act as censors of information and determine which news are distributed and, to whom.

[...] America On Line should honor its name and strive to represent the values of America on line, not to quench them at the first opportunity.

[Well, it looks as if AOL is back to demonstrating that it should be called America Off Line. This matter should not at all be an issue unless the paper is engaged in spamming or will not allow a person to unsubscribe. Ordinarily, to get a newsletter or newspaper in your inbox, you have to use a SUBSCRIBE feature at the publisher's web site. This feature, and ideally each issue of the publication emitted, should also contain instructions on how to unsubscribe. If that is the case with La Nacion Cubana, then this action is very clearly censorial and AOL has enacted a heckler's veto. If there are people who are offended by the publication's content, they need only unsubscribe; if they won't do so, they have no just cause for complaint about getting the newspaper in their inbox. --MN]

By Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Vodafone. The four companies announced an agreement with human rights groups, internet freedom activists and others, to establish a set of principles covering how they deal with censorship and other restrictions by authoritarian states such as China. According to a statement released on this day, The four companies have agreed to work with non-governmental organisations to, "seek solutions to the free expression and privacy challenges faced by technology and communications companies doing business internationally." A senior executive at one of the companies was bluntly honest in his assessment of the action: "The fantasy is, we're all going to say we're going to stop censorship. The issue is not whether we're doing this in good faith, the question is, what's the leverage?" However, an official at one of the human rights groups involved said that by adopting a common front and making issues such as censorship a subject of their broader negotiations with foreign governments, the companies might succeed in rolling back some censorship of their web search engines. Vodafone, the European telecommunications company, seems to have joined this action because it is actively involved in a number of corporate social responsibility issues; it has not faced criticism for issues of freedom of information over the internet.

[Okay, so it's not much, but it's a start. What the rest of us can do is to keep the ball rolling now that it's gotten started. --MN]

By, allegedly, Ogun Samast. On this day, Hrant Dink, editor of the Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos, was gunned down in Istanbul, Turkey, just outside his newspaper's office. The motive for the crime is believed to be Mr. Dink's refusal to engage in holocaust denial. The holocaust at issue was not the Jewish Holocaust of Hitler's Germany, but efforts by the Turkish powers of the Ottoman Empire to eradicate Armenians starting in or about 1915. This pogrom to kill or drive out the Armenian population lasted for eight years. It is believed that as many as 1.5 million Armenians were killed in the pogrom, which to this day the government of Turkey denies ever happened. The official party line is that the death count was much lower, and that the deaths were the result of an uprising by Armenian militants instead of a government eradication campaign. Because Mr. Dink refused to engage in holocaust denial, he was the subject of constant vilification, defamation, and outright threats by political extremists, as well as having charges of insulting Turkishness brought against him by the government:

• 2001: The government suspended publication of Agos when he advocated acknowledgement of genocide. He was acquitted and publication resumed.

• 2004: The government interpreted part of an article he wrote as anti-Turk; he received a six-month suspended sentence. [Which he appealed; the final outcome was not reported. --MN]

• 2006, February: Acquitted of insulting the Turkish state; in 2002 he had criticized a verse in the Turkish national anthem.

• 2006, July: Received another six-month suspended sentence after writing an article that called for Armenians to "now turn their attention to the new life offered by an independent Armenia."

• One week afterwards, the Istanbul public prosecutor opened a new case against him because on 14 July he refered to the 1915 massacre as genocide during an interview with Reuters.

Mr. Dink was awaiting trial on those last charges, for which he could have been sentenced to three years in prison. Ogun Samast was arrested on Saturday, 20 Jan, as the prime suspect in the murder. On 22 Jan, Reporters Without Borders posted a follow up to its coverage in which it requested that the police not merely prosecute the person suspected of committing the actual murder, but to continue their investigation into accomplices. The organization commented: "It would be inconceivable for the police to content themselves with just arresting the man who pulled the trigger. The Turkish authorities must make it clear they are determined to find and punish any instigators, and to identify all those who may have had a role in this tragedy. This is an essential condition for preventing any recurrence and for healing the wounds left by this awful murder."
(see 15 Jun 2007)

By Gail Dines. A professor of American Studies at Wheelock College in Boston, she had a piece titled CNN's "Journalism" is a Fool's Paradise published at CommonDreams.org on this day. In it, she exposes what amounts to fullscale fraud and a complete lack of journalistic ethics by Paula Zahn and the producers of Paula Zahn Now. She was called in to be a commentator for a segment on the rape case involving several members of the Duke College Lacrosse team, being asked to participate as an expert witness in the field of gender and race. Once she was committed to attending, having flown in and left the airport for the Durham courthouse, she was advised that the guidelines for the interview had been altered so that the examination of the issues would focus only on race. The result was a show that apparently could be called misrepresentative only in the most polite of terms.

[By altering the focus of the exploration, and engaging in several other forms of skullduggery, the show's producers framed the entire rape case as a matter of Black-against-Whites racism, and painted the alleged rapists as the real victims. Doing something like this might be permissible in the courtoom, it is absolutely unacceptable in the press. See the source article for full background of the treachery and deception, and how the Paula Zahn Now show engaged in outright journalistic whoring, not to mention having engaged in fraudulent and racist manipulation of the public. The only thing to determine is whether it was done deliberately or if it only turned out that way. --MN]

By Kathleen Ensz. Exasperated by repeatedly receiving mailings from the office of Republican Marilyn Musgrave, Ms. Ensz, a Democrat, collected some dog feces from her backyard, wrapped it in a political mailer from Representative Musgrave, and left the package at that official's office. Ms. Ensz now faces a misdemeanor charge of "use of a noxious substance".

Enter the First Amendment; her lawyers are calling the delivery a form of free expression. Patricia Bangert, one of her attorneys, said the act was "probably crude and boorish", but likened it to a form of political protest such as Thomas Jefferson's criticism of the King of England. At a hearing on 16 Jan, she also cited Mr. Hankey, an animated, talking turd from the show South Park, as evidence that it is commonplace to use excrement to express disdain. She is quoted: "Etiquette and propriety aside, it is commonplace in today's society to equate a distasteful or disliked person, situation, or thing, to feces." Ms. Ensz, a retired French professor from the University of Northern Colorado, is scheduled for trial in Weld County on 15 May.

[Exercises in free speech of this sort are probably best left as a last resort. Always, always, always try being reasonable first. It's not a matter of censorship, it's a matter of discretion. And if being reasonable doesn't work, you've got a body of evidence to back up your claim in court that you were being harrassed and were merely speaking out against it. Which is what I see as the key point in this case: what did Ms. Ensz do to stop the mailings before resorting to her exercise in free expression. --MN]
(see 28 May 2007)

By Principal Paul Neubauer, at St. Francis High School, Minnesota. In fall of 2006 the students put on a play called "The Children's Story." The play explores the repercussions of a fictional conquest of a U.S. school by an oppressive government. In it, the student actors handled an actual flag, then substituted shredded bunting to make it appear as though a flag had been ripped apart. The editors of the student newspaper had planned to run a photograph on the front of the edition of The Crier to be published on this day; the photo doesn't show an actual American flag being destroyed, just shredded red, white, and blue bunting. It was taken by editor in chief Eric Sheforgen. The image is already familiar to many students and staff at the school, who had watched the scene performed on stage, and the photo itself hung in a school hallway. That photograph was removed by Principal Paul Neubauer on 20 Dec 2006. What makes this an incident of censorship is that Principal Paul Neubauer summarily ordered the image removed for the vague and ill-defined fear that some might be offended by it, and not out of any actual concerns over real disruptions to the school environment. According to the written policy of the school district: "Official school publications are free from prior restraint by officials except as provided by law." This action was further supported by Edward Saxton, superintendent of Independent School District 15, who said that many other photographs from the play would have been appropriate.

[It's not a question of other photographs being appropriate, it's a question of this photograph not being inappropriate, and it's having been chosen by the editor of the paper, and having been removed in violation of Tinker.

By the legislature of the State of Illinois. See the entry on the Vanity Plates page.

By U.S. Magistrate Judge James C. Francis IV. He rejected efforts by the City of New York to keep secret most of the files and videotapes documenting the arrests of hundreds of protesters at the Republican National Convention in 2004, in a ruling on this day. He repeatedly criticized the city's reasoning for its requests, saying that there was little factual support or that they lacked common sense. One of the city's arguments was that some documents needed to be kept secret because they contained information that is unreliable or subject to misinterpretation. He wrote of that particular point: "The mere fact that a given document does not provide the reader with a full picture does not make it unreliable. Additionally, the city gives the general public very little credit when it contends that readers will be unable to grasp that the information contained in these documents might be incomplete or inaccurate." Although both sides agreed that some documents could remain secret, the NYCLU challenged the secrecy of others. Among the city's requests was to keep confidential a document describing the use of plastic handcuffs; the judge wrote to that: "The allegedly sensitive information to which the city refers would be obvious to anyone with a modicum of common sense."

The New York Civil Liberties Union had filed two lawsuits in challenging the mass arrests in Oct 2004; it had gathered thousands of documents and videotapes in a legal process called discovery. The judge's order rebuffs the city's request to prevent the NYCLU from releasing those documents publicly. The NYCLU said it would not immediately release the information, however, as the city might appeal.

By Committee to Protect Journalists. The group reported that Russia's prosecutor general has opened a criminal investigation into several Chechnyan police officials who may have killed the reporter because she was about to publish an article alleging their involvement in torture. The information was disclosed to a delegation from the CPJ in a meeting with Foreign Ministry spokesman Boris Malakhov on 22 Jan. Foreign Ministry officials, while disclosing the lead, noted that it is one of several theories under consideration. Ms. Politkovskaya's article describing state-sponsored torture in Chechnya was published posthumously in her newspaper, Novaya Gazeta. After CPJ announced its findings, the Foreign Ministry issued statements disputing the organization's account, but acknowledging that several theories were being pursued.

The CPJ delegation also met with Ella Pamfilova, chairwoman of the government human rights council, and delivered more than 400 postcards calling on Russian President Vladimir Putin to bring to an end an alarming string of unsolved journalist slayings. Ms. Politkovskaya was the thirteenth journalists to have been killed in a contract-style murder since President Putin came to power in 2000. Although there have been arrests and prosectutions in three of the murders, not one of the cases had been solved as of this date. The two men accused of killing Paul Klebnikov, the Forbes Russia editor killed in 2004, were acquitted in May 2006 after a trial marred by procedural irregularities; the Russian Supreme Court overturned that verdict and ordered a new trial; the suspects were released from custody, and a new trial had not been ordered as of this date.

By FREADOM. On this day this Freedom of Information advocacy group launched a new freedom to read campaign. This campaign stems from efforts by the group to have the International Federation of Library Associations and the American Library Association acknowledge the persecution of private, Cuban citizens whose "crimes" were to lend books to other private citizens. As part of the sentencing for several of them, the courts ordered their collections to be destroyed; in some cases to be incinerated for "lack of usefulness". As a result of this advocacy, FREADOM launched the International Read a Burned Book campaign.

[I am associated with FREADOM. I am a member of the FREADOM newsgroup, I provide my services as an author and editor, and I have appealed to the Lithuanian Library Association specifically and to the library associations of the world, for support of a resolution condemning Cuban suppression of independent libraries, among other actions. I am also a signatory of the Read A Burned Book Statement. For background on these issues, see the Cuban Independent Librarians page. --MN]

By Virginia State Senator Kenneth T. Cuccinelli. Correctly known as SB 1120, this legislation was supposed to allow trespassing charges against reporters who enter private property to gather news about a death or other traumatic event. It was reported, however, that although the bill targeted journalists, it could also criminalize virtually anyone venturing onto a traumatized person's property; including door-to-door salesmen and delivery drivers. Under current state law, a person can be charged with trespassing only if he's been directly told to stay away, or if a sign is posted prohibiting entry. The proposed amendment would make entry illegal within a week after the resident "suffered a substantial personal, physical, mental, or emotional loss, injury or trauma," provided the visitor knew or should have known about the trauma. One of the fatal flaws is that the bill does not define what constitutes a trauma. This measure came to be called the scuzzball-reporter bill in light of a remark by Senator Cuccinelli: "There's obviously more than enough scuzzball reporters out there who don't have a shred of human decency to give a flying rat's tail about the condition or feelings or circumstances of these families -- they just want a juicy quote from them. If they are not going to regulate themselves, it's our job to protect the people of Virginia."

Apparently the senator's collegues had a better grasp on the idea that congress shall make no law abridging the free press; on this day not one other member of the committee would second the motion to send this bill to the senate.

By St. Clair County Associate Judge Andrew Gleeson. Lee Coleman heads a nonprofit group he formed to educate youth on the dangers of drug use; he uses a public-access cable channel to disseminate his message to a wider audience; he is not paid to operate the channel but, according to the contract, can use it, "for the purpose of providing community programming and information dissemination. However, he also began using the channel to question current city administrators and gave access to former City Manager Alvin Parks Jr., who ran for the mayoralty against Mayor Carl Officer. Mr. Coleman's criticisms of the city council and his support for Mr. Parks were, of course, partisan. On 14 Dec, the council voted to have Charter Communications pull the plug on the channel, but before losing his access, Mr. Coleman stepped up his criticism on his show Talk of the City, in particular, by questioning what the council had done to deserve the raise it voted for itself four days after voting to silence his transmissions. The channel was shut down 27 Dec, the day candidate Parks launched his mayoral campaign. Mayor Officer and Karen Cason, a councilwoman, both said this timing was a coincidence. And Mayor Officer maintained that using the station for political gain was an abuse that had to be stopped.

Mr. Coleman sued, arguing that the city was in breach of contract, "by failure to give notice with cause for termination" and that it abridged his right to free speech. The contract in question requires thirty days of notice. A termination notice was finally sent to Coleman on 18 Jan. On this day Judge Gleeson agreed with the allegation of breach of contract and ordered the city to reinstate the channel. The city is expected to argue in court on 05 Mar as to why it should be able to break its contract.

[City Attorney Mike Wagner commented about this situation: "The city is very sensitive to both sides being given fair time, and we think that is not happening." I think this is bullshit, because I didn't find any mention of the city attempting to get equal time on the channel, or what efforts it might have made to answer Coleman's criticisms at any alternate media outlet. But it might be that the reporting on this case is deficient. In any event, those citizens who might have watched Coleman's channel would have had access to mainstream outlets even if the city did not avail itself of those outlets. --MN]

By prosecutors in Utah and North Carolina. This film is the story of Lewellen, a nine-year old free-spirit obsessed with Elvis Presley in the 1960s Southern U.S., who is raped by a teenager. Shot in North Carolina, it was screened the week before this one at Sundance Film Festival in Utah. The rape scene lasts a few minutes, it is not graphic, there is no nudity, the scene is very darkly lit, and only actress Dakota Fanning's face and hand are shown. The Christian Film and Television Commission and its chairman, Ted Baehr, claimed the film violates federal child-pornography law because it appears to show minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct. A contention that is patently false in light of the description in the previous sentence; if that description is correct, then the rape is only implicit. Prosecutors in both Utah and North Carolina rejected these allegations on this day.

Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff watched the movie with the Utah child sexual exploitation law in hand. He later said his concerns didn't materialize on the screen, and is quoted: "None of the things on the Internet that people were saying about it were true. Not only does it not violate the statute, I think it's a good message for people on the subject."

The district attorneys in the two North Carolina counties where "Hounddog" was filmed over the summer of 2006 agreed with that assessment. Rex Gore, the Brunswick County D.A., said prosecutors reviewed the film in November and interviewed crew members, producers, and Ms. Fanning. He said in a statement: "I am aware that there is an outcry from some who find the content of the film disturbing and distasteful. However, public opinion is not the test we must apply as prosecutors; we must apply the law." Ms. Fanning commented during this week at Sundance that the rape scene is not the focus of the movie, and: "It's not really happening. It's a movie, and it's called acting. I'm not going through anything."

Despite there clearly being no violation of any N.C. law, state Senator Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, began working on prior restraint legislation that would require any film to receive script approval from the state, that was seeking the state's 15% tax credit for television and movies. He said the state should ensure its citizens aren't subsidizing what many may consider inappropriate. There was no indication that the Hounddog producer did or will apply for this credit. Jody Frisch, spokeswoman for the Writers Guild of America, commented about the proposal: "Government review of any kind of speech is anathema to the fundamental tenets of American democracy and must be rejected." The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights also asked the U.S. Justice Department to investigate the film.

By the National Socialist Movement. The Minneapolis, Minnesota, chapter of this neo-Nazi group had issued an invitation to a hate rally it was organizing for this day. Posted to the group's web site, the invitation reads in part:

On January 27th, 2007 we will be holding a symbolic book burning in the Minneapolis, Minnesota area. All known White Patriots are welcome to attend, and are encouraged to bring degenerate books suitable for throwing into the fire. We will be filming and recording this event for NSM Radio/TV, and possibly using some of the footage for an upcoming Music Video for the song Burn the Books by Achtung Juden (released on the NSM Record Label).

Come Join with us in this Historic Event, as we torch degenerate books such as the Talmud, and other anti-American and/or anti-White books.

[...]

The Concert will include include a Tribute to our fallen East Coast Director and Vice Presidential Candidate Col. Wild Bill Hoff who recently died in a fatal car wreck.

The Book Burning is sponsored by the National Socialist Movement, and the show afterwards is sponsored by NSM Records. Music will be provided by Total War, and possibly some other Bands to be announced.

[...]

Any bands looking to play a show in Minneapolis on Jan 27th, or our upcoming show at the Redneck Shop in South Carolina on April 21st, contact the NSM or NSM Records today.

The Book Burning and Concert are open to all known Pro-White Comrades, e-mail us or call XXX-XXX-XXXX and leave a phone # if you plan to attend, carpools are being organized now to attend this great event. You won't want to miss it!

The lack of information as to where the event was to be held and the necessity of leaving a call back number are simple security measures; it allows the organizing group to screen prospective participants. It is a common practice with intolerance groups which allows them to hold their events without counter-protests being suddenly organized at the same locale. Jewish, Christian and Muslim groups in Minnesota had joined to oppose this planned burning of "anti-white" books. A report of the event, written by Jeff Schoep, apparently the head of this chapter, was posted to the group's web site. A few items which were consigned to the flames:

• several letters from the German Government saying music from their record label is banned there;
• an Israeli flag;
• The Talmud;
• the Communist Manifesto;
• books promoting homosexuality/beastiality [sic];
• and unidentified other books.

[Once again the issue of standard book burning vs: core political speech is reared. An issue that might well hinge on the question: are the two inextricably entwined, or can they be separated? If so, as repugnant as this action is, and assuming the volumes to be burned are not stolen property, then this action constitutes protected speech. Jan 26th is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. The phone number above was edited out at my sole discretion; I have a general policy of not publishing other peoples' contact information. The emphasis in the quoted material is theirs, not mine. --MN]

By TruthOut.org and Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting. See the entry on The Lackey Journalists Affair page.

By Amnesty International. On this date the group issued a press release in which they illustrate the fullscale human rights violator that is the government of Cuba. They also condemned the United States embargo against the communist regime as exaserbating the problem. The group cited a few specific samples of persecution by the Cuban government.

By Tokyo's High Court. It confirmed that the public television network NHK had effectively bowed to political pressure to censor a 40-minute documentary from 2001, on the topic of "comfort women"; women who were press-ganged into prostitution to serve as sexual slaves for the occupying Japanese armies in South-East Asian countries. The court could not prove, however, that broadcaster had been under specific instructions. It ordered NHK and two television production firms to pay two million yen (approximately 16,400 USD) to the Violence Against Women in War Network - Japan, for breach-of-contract damages.

By the Kelso Public Library. The library now has a written policy which was approved during this month by the City Council for Kelso, Washington state. If a patron wants a certain book, magazine, or video removed from the collection, staff members can give that person a copy of the library materials selection policy. The policy contains a questionnaire asking which specific pages or sections of the material they're concerned about and asks whether the patron has read, seen, or heard the entire content of the material in question. The policy reads in part: "Full, confidential, and unrestricted access to information is essential for patrons to exercise their constitutional rights. ... Parents and guardians, not the library, have responsibility to guide and direct the reading, listening, and viewing choices of their own minor child." It also states how librarians decide what materials to buy, and sets forth a review process for handling complaints. The library director she will respond to the individual in writing if he or she turns in the questionnaire objecting to material, anyone who continues to object may speak before a library board meeting; the board will make a recommendation to the city manager who has the final say.

By U.S. District Judge William Alsup. See the entry on the Josh Wolf Affair page.

By Matt Taibbi, RollingStone.com. His piece, titled Punish the Right-Wing Liars was reprinted at Alternet.org. In it, he recommends: "If the right-wing media keeps spreading lies like the one about Barack Obama supposedly going to a madrassa as a child, it's time to consider hiring the meanest lawyers on the planet to fight these creeps."

"Are the American people ready for an elected president who was educated in a madrassa as a young boy and has not been forthcoming about his Muslim heritage?"
-- From Hannity.com, long after the "madrassa" story had been debunked

Nearly two years before the next presidential election, we've already set the tone: Even the most outrageous media fictions about candidates are apparently going to go unpunished.

At least that was my thought, after watching last week's unfolding of the Obama-madrassa scandal -- the unofficial starting gun for the Great Slime Race, as the 2008 presidential campaign will someday be known. I found the entire affair puzzling. I know for sure that if I made a journalistic "mistake" of that magnitude, I'd be spending the rest of my life picking strawberries in the Siberian tundra. Most print journalists I know would expect the same thing; the legal ramifications alone of intentionally going to print with a story that missed by that much would guarantee that 80 cents out of every dollar you made for the next ten years would go to the victim of your libel. That's unless you're Tom Friedman and you can use congenital idiocy as a defense in court.

[I remember thinking to myself back during the 2000 U.S. presidential campaign how odd it was that nobody was bringing libel suits against the Swift Boat group. Of course, even such a course of action would be made to look bad; the smear machine would most likely immediately start whining about how the victim of their defamations and smears couldn't take a little criticism. --MN]

By the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The court upheld a decision by U.S. District Judge George B. Daniels to block the City of New York from enforcing a law that would have prevented sales of spray paint and markers to fully franchised adults aged 18 to 21, inclusive. Seven high school and college students sued the city after it began to enforce anti-graffiti laws that went into effect Jan. 1, 2006. They say they need spray paint and broad-tipped markers to create effects such as mists, fades, blends, and different textures that cannot be accomplished with brushes. City lawyer Scott Shorr expressed disappointment; he commented: "The city enacted the new anti-graffiti restrictions as a tool for reducing graffiti vandalism by young adults, not to limit lawful artistic expression. Of course, the city will continue its efforts to combat the blight of illegal graffiti." Attorney Daniel Perez, representing the artists, said: "Every court that has considered this law has struck it down. The only thing this law accomplished was to take spray paint out of the hands of young artists. The city has persuaded no one that it cut down on graffiti." The order by Judge Daniels was a temporary ruling meant to enjoin enforcement until all of the facts of the dispute were explored indepth and a permanent ruling could be issued.

By Telus. The Vancouver-based phone company says it has no plans to stop selling pornographic material to its cellphone customers. Canada's second largest phone company, Telus is charging $3 to $4 per download. Spokesman Jim Johanssen said the company decided to start selling online pornography after tracking a significant portion of customers who were already using their phones to find such material; he also noted that phone companies in Europe and Asia have been selling pornography for some time, and the North American telecoms have been lagging behind. By one estimate, in 2005 North American mobile phone users spent $400 million US to download pornography. Telus has put safeguards in place to stop minors from viewing pornography, and to ensure that the content is legal. Despite that, 135 customers have registered complaints with the company. These complaints about fully franchised adults purchasing and then consuming their own private property are the reason the company had to defend what is clearly a business decision.

[What was not reported was how many clients Telus has and what proportion those 135 complaints constitute. In contrast, in 2003 there were over 4,000 complaints against Telus to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission regulatory body about lousy customer service, and those complaints were from only the geographic section of Western Canada. --MN]

By Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting. See the entry on The Lackey Journalists Affair page.

By Yoko Kawashima Watkins. The book depicts her life as an 11-year-old Japanese girl fleeing from a city in north Korea to Japan in 1945. In it, she talks about bombings by U.S. planes and murders, rapes and other atrocities committed against the Japanese by Koreans. Critics of the book, some in the North Korean government, condemn the book as revisionism, completely ignoring that it was written from the viewpoint of an 11 year old, and forty years afterward. The most recent action against the book is in the State of Hawaii, where the state Department of Education wants to know whether it is appropriate for students after being warned by the Korean Consulate that it contains historical distortions about the end of World War II. Customer reviews about the book at Amazon.com call it "propaganda material" and "far from the truth." Ms. Watkins, however, has defended the accuracy of her book, which has reportedly been removed from schools in New York, Massachusetts, Texas and Rhode Island. On 31 Jan, Schools Superintendent Pat Hamamoto sent an e-mail to school officials Wednesday asking for general feedback about the 183-page book. Greg Knudsen, spokesman for the department said the book is listed among thousands of titles available in an Accelerated Reader Program, and in a quick check, the department found 150 copies among 140 schools. Mr. Knudsen does not expect the book to be pulled from school library shelves, where it is listed as a fictionalized autobiography.

[The government critics also ignore that Korean soldiers would have been just as capable of atrocities as the Japanese were, and were almost certainly willing to give as good as they got from the occupying forces of thirty-five years that were now forced into retreat. Dong Yern Kim, deputy consul general is quoted: "It portrays that Japanese are victims and the Koreans as the villains and we have concerns about it." Yeah, well, personally, I have no doubt that the Korean victim did not hesitate to became the victimizer at the turn of a fortune of war. Unfortunately, it is all too much a part of human nature to do so. --MN]

By Prince. As fallout from The Janet Jackson Affair, the NFL produced this year's halftime show. The performance by Prince included a guitar solo during the "Purple Rain" segment of his medley, during which his shadow was projected onto a large, flowing beige sheet. As the rock star let rip, the silhouette cast by his figure and his guitar (shaped like the symbol into which he had once changed his name) had phallic connotations for the hypersensitive. A number of web journalers cried "Malfunction!", including Sam Anderson at New York magazine's Daily Intelligencer. Daily News television critic David Bianculli said that it was: "a rude-looking shadow show" that "looked embarrassingly rude, crude and unfortunately placed."

CBS spokesman Dana McClintock said on 06 Feb that the network received "very few" complaints about it, and NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said the league had received no complaints; he is quoted; "We respect other opinions, but it takes quite a leap of the imagination to make a controversy of his performance. It's a guitar." In answer to the question, "Was Prince's pose phallic", Rolling Stone magazine contributing editor Gavin Edwards commented: "The short answer is, of course it is." [...] "All that said, it didn't seem like a sniggering little puppet show. I think it was one of those things because a guitar at waist level does look like an enormous phallus."

[I've seen an image of the shadow from an article about the incident, and the end of the guitar was quite twisted to represent the symbol Prince changed his name to. All I can think of it now is: Somebody must have been in a horrifically disfiguring accident if they have a phallus that looks like that. --MN]

By a single, hypersensitive female embarrassed by the human female body. Atlantic Theatres in Atlantic Beach, Florida, had changed the title of the play to The Hoohaa Monologues after a single complaint of offensiveness. The exact nature of the complaint? . . . a woman had driven past the theatre with her niece in the car, who asked her aunt what a vagina was. Bryce Pfanenstiel is quoted: "I'm on the phone and asked 'What did you tell her?' She's like, 'I'm offended I had to answer the question'. We decided we would just use child slang for it. That's how we decided on Hoohaa Monologues."

Some welcomed the change to The Hoohaa Monologues, although some people expressed confusion; one person commented: "It sounds like a country band." On 06 Feb, the marquee was changed back to read The Vagina Monologues, after the play's organizers demanded it be changed back. The students, from the Florida Coastal School of Law, said the sign had to be the original title because they have rights to the play only if the content is not censored.

[I'm sorry, but what exactly was the "offense" here? That you had to admit to another female that she has a vagina? On 14 Feb, a piece titled Remembering V-Day: A Young Nun Defends "The Vagina Monologues", written under the pseudonym Sister Mary Eve, was posted to TruthOut.org. There is no indication that the timing was anything other than fortuitous, and the focus of the piece revolves around the dehumanizing of women by the R.C. church. It is a very well written and insightful piece and I recommend it highly. --MN]

By Sarah Bradburn, et al. In the winter of 2004 Ms. Bradburn was trying to do research at her hometown library, in Republic, Washington, while studying chemical dependency counseling at Eastern Washington University. She was unable to find information about teenage smoking on the computer at the library. When she went to the Spokane municipal library she was able to access a great deal of information on the subject. Ms. Bradburn is now one of four parties to a lawsuit the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington has brought in U.S. District Court in Spokane, against the North Central Regional Library District. According to the ACLU's complaint, the district will not turn off its Internet filters when asked by adults who wish to access constitutionally protected information. At the heart of the federal case is the right to unrestricted access to legal materials on the internet in rural areas, where broadband connections are generally fewer and more scattered than in larger towns and cities. U.S. public libraries must have filtering software to comply with the Children's Internet Protection Act. Thomas Adams, the library district's Seattle attorney, reportedly said: if some of the plaintiffs wanted access to filtered information, "Why didn't they just ask?" Doug Honig, the ACLU of Washington communication director, replied: They shouldn't have to; he is quoted: "If an adult wishes to look at the Internet without a library's filters on, the adult ought to be able to do so without asking a librarian."

By the time the ACLU had filed suit in Nov 2006, the district had replaced its filtering software with a newer and less restrictive system. Ms. Bradburn can now access the information on teen smoking she couldn't access in 2004. Mr. Adams does acknowledge, however, that is not the case for all parties. The other plaintiffs are:

• Pearl Cherrington, of Twisp: a professional photographer who was blocked from researching art galleries and health sites;

• Charles Heinlen, of Okanogan: a web journaler who was blocked from accessing information about gun use by hunters and other social activities in the Internet;

• the Second Amendment Foundation: a nonprofit organization advocating the right to possess firearms, which alleges the library district is blocking access to its Internet magazine, Women & Guns.

By Daphne Bavelier, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester. See the entry on the Child Porn/Harmful to Minors page.

By School District officials in Kearney, New Jersey. An article posted on this day at First Amendment Center reported on what appears to be a denial of access to due process. Beginning in Sep 2006, Kearny High School junior Matthew LaClair secretly made recordings of teacher David Paszkiewicz teaching according to Christian doctrine; he did so to gather evidence for a complaint he planned to file against the teacher's comportment. He undertook this action because he was concerned that officials would not believe him when he did complain. Officials did take corrective action in the matter, including requiring all district teachers to take mandatory training on church/state separation. However, they also banned secretly recording one's instructors. The source article for this entry did not report any rationale for this action.

By Reporters Without Borders. The watchdog group decried the closure of the conservative daily newspaper Siassat Rouz (Politics Today) since 03 Feb. It was closed on the orders of the Press Monitoring Commission due to an article held to be an insult to Sunni minority of Iran. Reuters said the article, on 01 Feb, gave the impression that the newspaper criticised the second caliphate of Omar Ibn al-Khattab. The paper's management published an apology the next day, blaming a typographical error.

[Take heed and be warned: In an authoritarian or totalitarian state, being a lackey of the ruling regime is not a defense against unjust oppression against you specifically. --MN]

By William Rivers Pitt. His piece titled The 21st Century Sucks was reprinted at TruthOut.org on this day. In it, he presents a two-faceted look at the Boston Bomb Scare fiasco. The first part is critical of how the press covered the event, which it did in such a way as to promote fear and panic, and the second part examines societal consequences likely to derive from the incessant "war on terrorism" hysteria.

By Josh Wolf. See the entry on the Josh Wolf Affair page.

By Anick Jesdanun of Associated Press. In her piece, titled Cronkite Warns Drive for Media Profits Poses Threat to Democracy, and which is posted at CommonDreams.org, she reports criticism of the American press by four authoritative persons:

• Walter Cronkite, former CBS News anchor;
• Michael Copps, a commissioner on the Federal Communications Commission;
• Tom Rosenstiel, former political reporter for the Los Angeles Times, now director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism;
• Kathleen Carroll, executive editor of the Associated Press.

Three of the cited criticisms deal with the issue of media consolidation. Mr. Cronkite's criticism focuses on the issue of subverting news coverage to profit making. He is quoted:

"they [journalists] face rounds and rounds of job cuts and cost cuts that require them to do ever more with ever less.

"In this information age and the very complicated world in which we live today, the need for high-quality reporting is greater than ever.

"It's not just the journalist's job at risk here. It's American democracy. It is freedom."

[...]

[As broadcasters cut budgets] "we're all left with a sound bite culture that turns political campaigns into political theater." [...]

"Consolidation and cost cutting may be good for the bottom line in the short term, but that isn't necessarily good for the country or the health of the news business in the long term."

For more on that matter, see: When MBAs Rule The News Room, by Doug Underwood, ISBN 0-231-08048-4, Dewey # 070.4/U56. The criticism by Mr. Copp also touched upon the impact consolidation is having on the music industry. While he did not name Clear Channel Communications Inc. specifically, he complained that many local musicians were being pushed aside when "media behemoths" distribute playlists from a central office.

[Consolidation also allows for wider reaching censorial actions, such as when Clear Channel forbade the playing of Dixie Chicks recordings. --MN]

By the Dixie Chicks. The group swept the Grammys with big wins for their Taking the Long Way CD. As a result of the censorial actions against the group, they had a two year long dry spell. They finally ended it with this release which became notorious for the cut Not Ready to Make Nice; this song is a rebuff to the censors who demanded that they, "shut up and sing". Not Ready to Make Nice won record and song of the year, and Taking the Long Way won album of the year.

The censorship movement against the Chicks is continuing however, and the awards might spark another radio backlash. On 12 Feb, country broadcasters said that the group's five wins show how out of touch the Recording Academy is from the average country fan. Tony Lama, program director for KXNP in North Platte, Nebraska is quoted: "I think (the listeners) are outraged. This is rural, conservative America. They are just disgusted." Ken Tucker, Billboard country music correspondent, is quoted: "If you're trying to offer an olive branch to country radio, that's not the way to do it. The Chicks are celebrating being the outlaws."

On 16 Feb, an examination of the ongoing censorship movement by Ashley Sayeau, titled Dixie Chicks Among Esteemed Outlaws, shows how this movement actually violates Country music traditions.

[Personally, I think that comment by Lama, if it is at all true, shows how out of touch with reality rural, conservative America is with the rest of the nation. As for Tucker, the Chicks did not do anything wrong, they are not the ones who need to apologize; they do not need to suck up to your industry for uttering an honest opinion. Death threats, however, are not protected speech, and censorship is a human rights violation. --MN]

By the Society of Professional Journalists. See the entry on the Josh Wolf Affair page.

By film director Amir Muhammad. Mr. Muhammad made this film, about the communists wanted to liberate the Malay peninsula from British rule After World War II, as a sequel to Lelaki Komunis Terakhir (The Last Communist), which was banned in 2006. On this day, the Malaysian Film Censorship Unit banned this independent documentary about the lives of former Malay Muslim members of the now defunct Communist Party of Malaya. The censors objected to the film's alleged theme of "a noble communist struggle" and to its apparent portrayal of the Malaysian government as being unfair for not appreciating the communists' struggle and for not offering them a decent rehabilitation arrangement as was done in Thailand. The film was also accused of distorting history in equating the communist struggle with that of the Malay warriors who fought British rule in the nineteenth century. The film was the sequel to In an appeal against the ban, Mr. Muhammad argued for a "limited viewing" rating for the film, since it had been ruled "inappropriate for general viewing".

By Westchester County, New York State. An article posted to First Amendment Center on this day reported on an apparent movement against use of the word Nigger. The Westchester County legislature voted unanimously to declare the "symbolic elimination" of this racist slur on 12 Feb, saying its use "remains damaging, divisive and derogatory." Legislator Clinton Young of Mount Vernon said in an interview: "I hear it just too much in my community and in other communities throughout America. No matter who uses it or how they use it, it's demeaning. If people knew the origin of the word, I believe they would stop using it." Mr. Young is himself black, and is the draftee of the resolution. When asked if the resolution impinged on free speech Mr. Young replied, "We can exercise free speech by choosing not to use this hateful word."

This resolution traces the word's origin to slave masters and says it "is used in an ignorant and derogatory fashion to demean a black person." The source article also reported that earlier this Feb, New York City Councilman Leroy Comrie introduced a similar resolution, which is yet to be voted on, and that in Washington D.C., Representative Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., has been talking with Congressional Black Caucus members about taking some similar action in Congress.

[The resolution might be fatally flawed in that it does not itself contain the word nigger; it refers to: "The 'N' word". I suppose any reasonable person would be able to perceive from the context that the word being referred to is nigger, but I wonder if this language prudery would make the resolution, or a law based on it, constitutionally infirm. Anyway, even if they could ban the word "nigger" outright -- which they do not seem to be attempting -- bigoted trash would just use another word to mean the same thing. See my commentary about the origin of "nigger". And while Mr. Young is correct that I can exercise free speech by choosing to not use the word, it is not a free choice if I am forbidden to choose otherwise. --MN]

[Addendum (07 Mar 2007:) On 01 Mar, the First Amendment Center reported that the NYC City Council did pass a symbolic ban of the word nigger, with the intention of educating a new generation about the word's past. Although it has historically been a derogatory epithet, it has more recently been adapted by black entertainers and youths as a term of endearment for one another. As a result, some young adults said the resolution is a waste of time. Some blacks argue that co-opting the word is empowering, and that reclaiming a slur and giving it a new meaning takes away its punch. In an interview in Dec 2006, Oscar-winner Jamie Foxx said he would not stop using the word nigger, and that he didn't see anything inappropriate about blacks using it within their own circles. Backers of the resolution say it is impossible to paper over the epithet's origin and the ugly history of humiliating and demoralizing blacks. --MN]

By Reporters Without Borders. The group took exception to comments by Cuban communications minister Ramiro Valdes in which he described the Internet as a "tool for global extermination" and as a "wild colt" that needed to be tamed, and also accused the United States of using the Internet to "undermine the communist government". Mr. Valdes also insisted that if few Cubans were online, this was due to a US embargo that prevented Cuba from have decent Internet connections. He made these remarks at the opening of a conference on communications technologies in Havana on 13 Feb. On this day the watchdog group responded in a statement:

"The US embargo prevents Cuba from connecting to the Internet by underwater cable and this obviously does not favour development of the Internet, but we published a report in October [2006] that shows that the authorities deliberately restrict online access."

"It would anyway have been astonishing if a country that has no independent radio or TV station or newspaper did allow unrestricted access to the Internet. We await the creation of a better Internet connection via Venezuela, as the minister announced, and we will then see if the government finally allows its citizens access to an uncensored Internet."

By Amy Goodman. See the entry on the Josh Wolf Affair page.

By U.S. District Judge Charles S. Haight. He ruled on this day that New York Police Department videotaping of two recent protests was as egregious as the police conduct at anti-Vietnam War demonstrations; which incidents led to permanent court oversight of police surveillance and intelligence collecting methods at large gatherings. He said that the city had violated the Handschu guidelines, which date to 1985. He is quoted from the decision: "Solely politically based investigations are flatly prohibited by the guidelines. In other words, there must always be a legitimate law enforcement purpose -- having a purpose of investigating political activity exclusively for its own sake is never allowed." New York Civil Liberties Union executive director Donna Lieberman, said the ruling: "should restore the expectation that New Yorkers can participate in lawful demonstrations without fear of being placed in political dossiers." The city was not punished for the videotaping of the two recent protests, but it will be held in contempt of court and fined for future violations.

Despite this, Judge Haight also said that the city cannot be stopped from videotaping demonstrators on First Amendment grounds despite the contention by plaintiffs that being videotaped by police at peaceful protests is unpleasant, unsettling, and inhibits their activities; "These sentiments, while understandable in human terms, fall well short" of what is needed to assert a constitutional claim. See the source article for more background.

By anti-freedom advocates. Twenty-fourth Oct 2006 was the third annual nationwide Pro-Life Day of Silent Solidarity silent protest; it is sponsored by the Christian, anti-abortion organization Stand True. Students were encouraged to wear anti-abortion clothing, pass out information, and wear tape across their mouths to symbolize the lost speech of unborn children. At least five law suits emerged involving middle and high school students who participated.

• lawsuit involving Sarah Hollen, a Penn Cambria High School student in Pennsylvania, was settled last month when the administration agreed to only prohibit "obscenity or content not protected by the First Amendment," according Bowman. Hollen also was stopped from distributing leaflets and told to remove the tape from her mouth.

• Preliminary injunction was granted in the cases involving:
  • A plaintiff identified as M.A.L., a Jefferson Middle School eighth-grader, who, according to the complaint, was allegedly stopped from participating in the silent protest on the grounds that his expression was not "age-appropriate", was "disruptive", and that it was not suitable [for him] to express a pro-life message,
  • Scott Fish of South Jefferson Clarke Senior High School, New York,
  • an unnamed student at Gowan Middle School, New York, and,
  • Andrew Raker of Millbrook High School in Virginia.

Alliance Defense Fund lawyers said these cases are important because they are upholding the standard set by Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District.

By the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. An article titled Government study suggests FCC can limit TV violence was posted at First Amendment Center on this day. The title is misleading, however, as the primary issue under examination is whether or not the FCC can relegate "excessively violent" content to the broadcasting safe harbour, not that it can regulate such content outright as suggested. The article also examines a number of secondary issues along with frictions between the supporters and detractors of this movement. That excessive media violence can be relegated to the safe harbour along with indecency is suggest by a recent report; FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said in commenting about it: "In general, what the commission's report says is that there is strong evidence that shows violent media can have an impact on children's behavior and there are some things that can be done about it."

[Yeah, like maybe turning off the television or discussing with your children what they are watching? Oh, wait; that's no good; that would involve actual parenting. See my commentary on this issue. --MN]

[Addendum (07 Mar 2007:) On 01 Mar, the First Amendment Center published a piece by Craig R. Smith, director of the Center for First Amendment Studies at California State University - Long Beach, titled Insidious censorship: equating violence, indecency in which he analyses this movement. --MN]
(see 07 May 2007)

By Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting. See the entry on The Lackey Journalists Affair page.

By Utah. The Utah House of Representatives voted 70-0 to abolish the state's 131-year-old criminal laws covering libel and slander. The final step is for Governor Jon Huntsman Jr. to ratify the bill; he has until 20 Mar to do so. This bill stems from the Utah Supreme Court Nov 2002 ruling in I.M.L. v. State of Utah that the state's criminal libel laws were unconstitutional. There were, as of this date, seventeen states with such laws in the U.S. They allow the states to fine or imprison speakers of defamatory statements. All fifty states also have civil libel laws.

by Susan Patron, author and librarian. The 2007 winner of the Newbery Medal, has come under attack due the inclusion of the correct, anatomical term "scrotum". It is part of a subplot centering around the story of dog that was bitten on the scrotum by a rattlesnake. The word has shocked some school librarians who have pledged to ban the book from elementary schools, and reignited debate over what constitutes acceptable content in children's books. They are apparently led by Dana Nilsson, a teacher librarian, and a church official in Durango, Colorado. The Higher Power of Lucky was first published in Nov 2006 in a modest run of 10,000 copies. After the 22 Jan announcement of the Newbery the publisher quickly ordered another 100,000 copies, which arrived in bookstores, schools and libraries around 05 Feb. The story of the movement broke in the The New York Times on 18 Feb. On 21 Feb, Susie Bright had an piece titled You Say Scrotum, I Say Hoo-Ha in which she takes a fairly indepth look at this incident. For one thing, she criticized The New York Times for improper reporting in that they failed to make any mention of Ms. Nilsson being a church leader, and then went on to condemn ultra-conservativism driven censorship as vile and reprehensible.

[Addendum (25 Feb 2007:) On 21 Feb, an article in the Boston Herald reported that Associated Press had contacted several librarians critical of The Higher Power of Lucky. All said they either still have it or were still making up their minds. Even Dana Nilsson told AP that she is carrying it, although she questions whether it was worthy of a Newbery. Kathleen Horning, president of the Association for Library Service to Children, is quoted: "Librarians have these discussions all the time about books and ask each other, 'How are you handling this situation?'" Nilsson said that while some of those who contacted her had decided not to select it, it was for other reasons: unhappiness with the quality of the writing or the believability of the characters. --MN]

By Committee of Concerned Cuban Parents. An article in El Nuevo Herald reported that this group removed the book Discovering Cultures, Cuba from a Miami school and subsequently claimed that it had "kidnapped" the book and would hold it in legal limbo. The "ransom demand" the group made was that the book be banned from Miami schools. The group removed the book from the Norma Bossard school library on the grounds that the author, Sharon Gordon, presents information about Cuba which is erroneous and biased in favor of the Castro government.

In reply to this censorship, Robert Kent, co-founder of Friends of Cuban Libraries, issued a press release on 20 Feb in which he condemned this action and announced that Friends of Cuban Libraries will send gift copies of Discovering Cultures, Cuba, along with Los Niños de Cuba, to the Norma Bossard school. The second book was written by ex-political prisoner Armando Valladares, and which expresses sharply divergent views about life under the Castro government. The group FREADOM, which advocates for an International Read a Burned Book week issued a press release announcing that it would also send a Spanish language edition of Animal Farm. Walter Skold, the co-chair of this group commented: "That is truly Orwellian thinking, so we thought it would be great to donate the classic anti-totalitarian book Animal Farm so the students could read it and get some idea of what is going on around them, both there and in Cuba."

[Walter Skold had written in an e-mail concerning this matter: "it looks from the machine translation that they have NOT kidnapped, or stolen a book, but rather will not turn it back in." I wrote back that this is an interesting point, but that a book becomes overdue due to honest forgetfullness, whereas this was a willful refusal to return the book and thereby constitutes theft. After further consideration, I also realized that there was no indication the group had signed out the book. That point might have been covered in the Spanish report on the incident, but if they did not sign out the book, then this almost certainly constitutes outright theft. Mr. Kent replied to that e-mail that the original report used "secuestrarlo", the Spanish word for kidnapped, which is the word the CCCP used for their action. He also used the word "seized" in his press release. An English language article said: "Cuban-American ultra right sectors took away another book . . . ". --MN]

[Addendum (25 Feb 2007:) On 22 Feb, an article posted to NBC6.com said specifically that Dalila Rodriguez had checked the book out of the library. She also renewed the censorship movment against Vamos a Cuba by signing out that book as well. The due date for both books was 16 Feb; neither had been returned. So not only is there a count of theft to explore, but a count of contempt of court as well, as Vamos a Cuba was ordered by the court to be left accessible to the student body. --MN]
(see 18 Apr 2006; 14 Jun 2006; 27 Jun 2006; 22 Aug 2006; 02 Mar 2007)

By those sworn to defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic. An article titled More U.S. Military Assaults on Media, by Dahr Jamail and Ali al-Fadhily, on 23 Feb, reported that the Union of Iraqi Journalists, in the Baghdad neighbourhood of al-Waziriyah, was subjected to a military assualt by U.S. and Iraqi forces. A US army mobile unit fired on the union's headquarters after seeing armed guards, after which members of the Iraqi army then stormed into the premises, disarmed and detained the guards, and then seized the union's ten computers and fifteen electricity generators intended for donation to the families of journalists killed by the hostilities. The guards were then taken into custody and apparently held incommunicado, as it was not known where they being held as of 23 Feb. Reporters Without Borders condemned the raid on that day, saying: "We strongly condemn this unjustified attack. The building's guards were authorised to carry firearms and did not behave in an aggressive or threatening manner towards the soldiers patrolling the neighbourhood. We call for their immediate release."

The spokesman of the coalition forces in Iraq, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell, was unable to confirm during a news conference on 21 Feb whether or not there had even been a raid on the union's headquarters by coalition troops.

[Keep in mind that there is every reason why a building should have armed guards in the middle of a such a chaotic war zone. And given the persistent issue of physical assaults against reporters and attempts to suppress any kind of a free press in Iraq by both the occupying forces and the satrapy, I do not consider this matter to be an accident. Also see: The Pentagon vs. Press Freedom , by Norman Solomon, 22 Jan, and U.S. Military Spied on Hundreds of Antiwar Demos , by Aaron Glantz, 26 Jan. All of the above pieces are at CommonDreams.org. I highly reccommend the piece by Jamail and al-Fadhily. --MN]

By Fox News. See the entry on The Lackey Journalists Affair page.

By Nia Dinata. One of Indonesia's most acclaimed directors, his film has been controversial because it examines the role of religion in the 2002 nightclub bombings in Bali. The film premiered last month at the Indonesian Film Festival after Dinata agreed to film censors' request to delete a scene that shows the muslim bombers praying immediately before attacking the nightclubs. Gusti Ngurah Gde, head of Bali's film board, banned it outright after viewing the film. He is quoted: "If this movie is allowed to be screened in Bali, we fear people who do not understand it would trigger conflict and direct hatred at a certain group. If the Bali bombing tragedy is revived, this would reopen old wounds, especially among the victims." The 2002 Bali bombings badly affected tourism, the mainstay of the local economy, and killed 202 people: 88 Balinese, 88 Australians and 26 Britons. Many of the Balinese lived or worked nearby. Additional local people suffered burns or other severe injuries.

[This is difficult to say without seeming racist, but I have to admit he might very well have a point that would be invalid as a vague and ill defined fear in pro-libertarian cultures. Even in some places in India a sectarian mob will occasionally form that people will run and hide from at the sound of its approach. Mind you, libertarianism is founded on a basic assumption that people can be trusted to respect the rights and liberties of others. That kind of trust is not the hallmark of religious intolerance. --MN]

By the Supreme Court of Canada. On this day the court ruled, 9-0, that the security certificate system violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The government of Canada has described it as a key tool for safeguarding national security. The system was challenged on constitutional grounds by three men: Algerian-born Mohamed Harkat, Moroccan-born Adil Charkaoui and Syrian native Hassan Almrei, who have all denied having ties to terrorism groups. Mahmoud Jaballah and Mohammad Mahjoub, both born in Egypt, not technically part of the case but are in similar legal positions: being held in indefinite detention pending deportation.

The court basically said while it might not be arbitrary to detain the suspects in the first instance, it's arbitrary to continue the detention without a review for such a long time, and gave Parliament one year to re-write the law. In its ruling, the court said while it's important to protect Canada's national security, the government can do more to protect individual rights. The court said the men have the right to see and respond to evidence against them and cites a British law that allows special advocates or lawyers to see sensitive intelligence material, just not to share details with their clients.
(see 31 Oct 2003; 21 Oct 2007)

By Egypt. On 22 Feb Egypt convicted web journaler Abdel Kareem Nabil (whose online pseudonym is Kareem Amer) of insulting Islam and President Hosni Mubarak, and sentenced him to four years in prison. Mr. Nabil was arrested in Nov 2006 for remarks critical of Al-Azhar Universty in which he called it "the university of terrorism"; he also said it stuffs "its students' brains and turns them into human beasts ... teaching them that there is not place for differences in this life." He also criticized President Mubarek's government as a "symbol of dictatorship."

Egyptian Human Rights Organization head Hafiz Abou Saada commented: "This is a strong message to all bloggers who are put under strong surveillance that the punishment will very strong." The conviction also drew the attention of U.S. congressmen Trent Franks, R-Ariz and Barney Frank, D-Mass, who wrote to the Egyptian Ambassador: "the Egyptian government's arrest of Mr. Amer simply for displeasure over writings on the personal Web log raises serious concern about the level of respect for freedoms in Egypt."

By William Rivers Pitt. A media criticism of CNN, this piece was published at TruthOut.org on this day. In it, Mr. Pitt draws a picture of a news network sluttishly wallowing in infotainment and tabloid hackery. He wrote in part:

Finally, like a fool, I clicked over to the CNN web site to see what their daily offering of dreck smelled like.

This was a bad idea.

My higher brain functions were momentarily paralyzed by the lead headline, "Ringmaster Judge Faces Flak." It was almost like a Zen koan; my mind just stopped. Judge? Flak? Did the judge presiding over the Libby trial have a meltdown or something? How was this story important, or even vaguely pertinent, to any kind of commonly- understood reality?

It wasn't important, at least not to me. This story was, of course, focusing on the hearing to decide who would gain possession of the body of the recently departed Z-list celebrity, Anna Nicole Smith. CNN, in its wisdom, felt the need to do a full spread on this random, anonymous judge whose rotten luck delivered this bag of nonsense to his courtroom.

Yeah, I know, no one with any real media awareness should be surprised by this kind of swill. Neither am I, in the abstract. A fair portion of the reason I draw breath involves my disgust and disdain for CNN, for the other "news" purveyors of like quality, for their feigned piety of objectivity, for the generational damage these multi-billion-dollar snow-blowers have done, allowed, participated in, profited by.

Even though I'm all too aware of these realities, I can still be left wordstruck by the awesome vapidity of the "news" every once in a while. It takes a cynic who still clings to a dollop of hope and optimism, perhaps, to still be awed by the grim fact that there is actually no bottom to the barrel.

By the Book and Periodical Council and Canada Council for the Arts. Canada's Freedom To Read Week begins on this day and runs until 03 Mar. This year's theme is: Free a challenged book!

By U.S. District Judge Mark Wolf. He threw out a lawsuit filed by parents who objected to discussions of gay families in their children's classrooms. In doing so, he ruled the parents do not have the right to dictate public school curricula. His 23 Feb ruling in Parker v. Hurley reads in part:

"In essence under the Constitution public schools are entitled to teach anything that is reasonably related to the goals of preparing students to become engaged and productive citizens in our democracy. Diversity is a hallmark of our nation. It is increasingly evident that our diversity includes differences in sexual orientation."

While Judge Wolf dismissed both the federal and state claims made in the suit, the parents can refile in state court. Jeffrey Denner, attorney for the parents, said they would do so, and that they would also appeal the ruling to the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. David Parker's complaint is that Lexington school administrators violated a state law saying parents be given notice of and an opportunity to exempt their children from a curriculum that "primarily involves human sexual education or human sexuality." John Davis, an attorney for Lexington school officials, said the books cited by the plaintiffs, one of which was King and King, did not focus on sex education, but merely depicted various families. Sarah Wunsch, staff attorney for the ACLU, commented: "This is not a case about teaching about homosexuality. This is a case where Lexington sought to teach about diversity and about having respect. It's not about sexuality; they were teaching about different kinds of families."

By Chris Crutcher. It was temporarily barred from being taught in Missouri Valley High School, in Iowa, after complaints of racial slurs and profanity. The Missouri Valley district removed the book from the English class after Reverend Nathan Slaughter complained about the language of intolerance contained within it. He commented about the book: "The book seems innocuous enough when you look on the cover jacket. It's about teaching tolerance. But it's filled with obscenities and tries to use negative things to teach the lesson."

[Basically the irReverend Mucky-muck is saying: one can teach tolerance without illustrating intolerance in comparison. How's that again? --MN]

By Susan Patron. 'Scrotum' as a Children's Literary Tool was reprinted on this day at CommonDreams.org. As much a self-portrait as a refutation of the objections to the book, it reveals a person with a deep and abiding love for the written word and an intrinsic respect for the innate, human intelligence of young readers. Read it and exult!

By the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee. See the entry on the Josh Wolf Affair page.

By Reporters Without Borders. The group spoke out on this day concerning the sentencing of Roberto de Jesús Guerra Pérez, to twenty-two months imprisonment on a charge of "disturbing the peace". RSF said it hoped the sentence will take into account the nineteen months already served. According to the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN), he was one of five dissidents who appeared before a municipal court in Havana on 27 Feb, and who received sentences ranging from 22 months to two years in prison, all for "disturbing the peace", because they had staged a peaceful demonstration on 13 Jul 2005, in commemoration of the shipwreck of five Cuban "balseros" who had been trying to reach Florida, in 1994.

RSF further reported that of the twenty-five imprisoned journalists in Cuba, two have not yet been tried. Armando Betancourt, a Nueva Prensa Cubana contributor and editor of the clandestine newspaper El Camagueyano, was to have been tried on 8 Feb by a municipal court in the central city of Camagüey; the judges adjourned the trial because the statements provided by State Security agents were "contradictory".

[In a free country, Senor Betancourt, who was arrested on 23 May 2006, would almost certainly have been released on bail while the agents of the state worked on getting their stories straight. --MN]

By government-authorized religious police. Saudi Arabia's semi-official Al Watan daily reported on this day that the religious police had tried to remove exhibited books on love and different religions at the book fair; the event also opened on this day. The paper quoted an Egyptian publisher as saying a group of young local men, accompanied by a mutawa, a member of the government-authorized religious police who are tasked with enforcing A'Sharia, entered his booth and asked him to remove some books. The publisher, who asked to remain anonymous, is quoted: "This happened without official paperwork and without officials, as they came in and began choosing titles they wanted removed. The problem is, they didn't even bother to read the inside of the books, in which one of them even defends Islam, but its title was about Christ; so they asked for their removal."

A Lebanese publisher also complained about an intrusion by who criticized books and demanded they be removed. The government of Saudi Arabia took away some of the mutawa's powers in 2006, but they remain recognized as the enforcment branch for A'Sharia in the Islamic country. The presence of the report in a semi-official Saudi newspaper, however, indicates a growing discontent with this group.

By Committee to Protect Journalists. The watch dog group posted a news alert to its web site on this day about the Togolese government having punished Mr. Lawson-Drackey over a commentary on private radio Nana FM, in which he was critical of a government minister. The High Authority on Audiovisual Communications (HAAC) said Drackey's radio editorials "gravely harmed the dignity of honest citizens". The citizen in question is Public Administration Minister Arthème Ahoomey-Zunu, the board chairman of a state agency managing Togolese markets, who is alleged to have pocketed 620,000 CFA francs (US$1,300) for personal expenses. He has not responded to the allegations.

According to Francis Pedro Amuzun, head of the Togolese Media Observatory, a local media regulatory body: "HAAC overstepped its authority and this action is illegal under Togolose law because no journalist or broadcaster may be suspended without a court order. The proper procedure would have been for HAAC to issue a statement of concern over content, but it is most troubling that their ruling did not even name any particular commentary in question."

[HAAC President Philippe Evegno said to CPJ that Drackey had aired opinions which were "systematic attacks against honest citizens", although he declined to provide any specific examples. Without knowing what it was Drackney had said, and how often he had said, it, I cannot say if this incident is a movement against reliable or unreliable journalism. It's still censorship, though. --MN]

By the legislature of Kansas. Concerns that schools would be forced to ban books by such writers as Toni Morrison, Richard Wright, and Maya Angelou, were instrumental in the failure to pass of a bill that would have made it easier to prosecute Kansan teachers for promoting "obscenity". The measure would have ended the automatic protection taht elementary, middle, and high school teachers enjoy from prosecution over materials used in classes. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, forty-two states have specific laws against promoting obscenity; some have an exemption such as the one in Kansas law, others do not. The proposal drew fire from the Kansas National Education Association, the state's largest teachers union, which said teachers could be prosecuted if they used novels with vulgar language and sexual themes in English classes.

On a voice vote, the House sent the bill back to committee, which does not kill the measure; regretably, it seems to have been sent back down for the wrong reason. Representative Tom Sawyer, D-Wichita, said passing such legislation would create new image problems for Kansas, which faced international ridicule over religious inspired anti-evolutionism by the State Board of Education. To his credit he is quoted: "It's just one more way that some of these right-wingers are trying to control the agenda in schools, so only books they want to be read will be read. We don't need to be burning books in Kansas." Charlie Mitchell, the ACLU's state legislative director, commented: "It's an attempt to chill speech, absolutely. It's an attempt by the Legislature to dictate what's being taught in the classroom."

Representative Lance Kinzer, R-Olathe, and other supporters, said the bill was to close a loophole that could permit minors to be exposed to pornography or other sexually oriented material. Mr Kinzer acknowledged, however, that he hadn't heard of any such instances involving schools. He also denied that the measure would open teachers up to prosecution as Kansas has a provision that material must lack serious literary, educational, artistic, political, or scientific value. Deborah Caldwell-Stone, deputy director of the American Library Association's Office of Intellectual Freedom, replied to that by saying: "Self-censorship is easy to go to when you don't have the money for a defense attorney or when you don't want to be held up in your community as a bad example."

[See my commentary on this issue. --MN]

By Chris Crutcher. This book is being challenged by some of the students as well as some parents at Missouri Valley School, Iowa. The heart of the challenge is the true to life language used by a central character. School Superintendent Dr. Tom Micek formed a review committee to examine the issue, but the book was unilaterally removed from the high school's sophomore English curriculum pending determination. As Mr. Crutcher said: "I think it is a big mistake to remove the book before the hearing. It invites censorship and allows a few people to exert a lot of power." Where students and parents went over the line is in demanding that the book be removed from the curriculum instead of just asking for alternate titles.

The students quoted in the source article all admitted that Whale Talk is a good book, it is just that the racist and hate-filled vulgarities made them uncomfortable; a common theme was the question as to whether such words were necessary to the story. Mr. Crutcher said that writing Whale Talk without the street talk and racial slurs would mean diminishing its characters' stories; he is quoted: "I would be backing off the brutality of her situation and the heroism of that kid [by removing the words]." He also said that removing the words would send the message to the victim of the abuse that her story was too difficult to tell. He further commented: "If I were a parent and my child did not want to read it, I would take it to the school board, too. But, I was a therapist for a long time, and I believe ugly things are better talked about than hidden away."

[The students cited in the source article also admitted that they already knew all the words in the book before reading it, and that some of the langauge was in use around the school. This makes me wonder what it is, exactly, they don't like: is it the words, or the realization that the ugly reality illustrated is in fact a reality. Quothe Mr. Crutcher: "I am glad kids stand up and say they hate that language, because I hate it, too. But it is a reflection of brutal racism. And racism makes us uncomfortable." --MN]

By Leonard Pitts Jr. On this day, this commentary was posted at the Sacramento Bee web site; the site commonly publishes his commentaries on Fridays, although he is a columnist for the Miami Herald. In this commentary, he revealed that the theft by Dalila Rodriquez appears to be part of a wider spread censorship movement, lambasted her group, and lauded Friends of Cuban Libraries:

Concerned Cuban Parents is in the business of being offended by children's books. Last year, the group pressed the school board into going to court -- the case is ongoing -- to remove two other titles that hurt the tender eyes of its members. They did this even though the board's lawyer warned the case could not be won because the board's position violated its own rules and multiple legal precedents.

But going through channels wasn't enough for Rodriguez. This latest book, "Discovering Cultures, Cuba," outraged her. She felt it romanticized life on the island. She felt children ought not see it.

So she stole it. Checked it out of the library, kept it past its return date and announced she has no intention of ever returning it.

Rodriguez trumpeted all this in an interview with my Miami Herald colleague, Tania deLuzuriaga. A check by deLuzuriaga found that a suspiciously high number of controversial books about Cuba are overdue at other South Florida libraries, suggesting this might be part of a campaign by Concerned Cuban Parents to win by surreptitious means what it has not been able to win in court.

"It's not censoring," Rodriguez said. "It's protecting our children from lies." But, of course, it is censoring, and I'd love to be able to report that the fact Bossard Elementary just got its book back means Rodriguez has belatedly realized this and repented. What it actually means is that I had a copy of the book shipped to the school at my expense. I read online where a group called Friends of Cuban Libraries has done the same thing.

Like me, they've probably had it with self-appointed censors.

[So, not only is Rodriquez herself a thief, but she appears to be part of a ring of thieves who seem to have engaged in a criminal conspiracy. Although I will admit that Rodriquez might be just a copy-cat criminal. --MN]
(see 18 Apr 2006; 14 Jun 2006; 27 Jun 2006; 22 Aug 2006; 19 Feb 2007)

By former White House official Steve Atkiss. See the anti-Bush sentiment suppression timeline.

By the Livingston Organization for Values in Education (LOVE) This group of ultra-conservatives in Howell, Michigan, objected to a series of books by sending letters of complaint to the offices of the U.S. attorney, state attorney general, and Livingston County prosecutor, in which they asked for opinions on whether the books violated laws on obscenity and distribution of materials that are harmful to minors. As per Standard Operating Procedure, the complaints were sent on to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which said it expects to complete its investigation into this issue in about a month. Livingston County Prosecutor David Morse took about a week. In a letter to the group, he wrote that the books do not meet the legal definition of obscenity: "After reading the books in question it is clear that the explicit passages illustrated a larger literary, artistic or political message and were not included solely to appeal to the prurient interests of minors."

[See my commentary on this issue. --MN]

by the Iranian Judiciary. The Judiciary had scheduled a trial for this day for five women charged with "acting against national security by participating in an illegal gathering". The defendants are: Nusheen Ahmadi Khorasani, Parvin Ardalan, Sussan Tahmasebi, Shahla Entesari, and Fariba Davoodi Mohajer. The Judiciary had also charged at least four other activists, Alieh Eghdamdoost, Bahareh Hedayat, Delaram Ali, and Azadeh Forghani, with the same offense, although it had not set their court date. The Judiciary filed charges against these women's rights activists following a demonstration to protest Iran's discriminatory laws. It took place in Tehran on 12 Jun 2006. Security forces aborted the demonstration; police agents beat the demonstrators with batons, sprayed them with pepper gas, marked them with color spray, and took some seventy people into custody.

This attack on the protesters constituted a fullscale violation of international laws and the constitution of Iran:

Universal Declaration of Human Rights	International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights	Iranian constitution
Article 20:	Article 21:	Article 27:
(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.	[N]o restrictions may be placed on the exercise of this right [of peaceable assembly] other than those imposed in conformity with the law and which are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security or public safety, public order, the protection of public health or morals or the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.	[P]ublic gatherings and marches may be freely held, provided arms are not carried and that they are not detrimental to the fundamental principles of Islam.

. . . or, at least, it would in the interpretation of any reasonable person. Unfortunately, the ICCPR, of which Iran is a signatory, and the Iranian constitution contain words or concepts that can be exploited as loopholes by religious fanatics: Morality. Still, Shirin Ebadi, 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner, counsel for the Kazemi family, and counsel for several of the accused in this case, told Human Rights Watch that the 12 Jun gathering satisified all conditions set forth by Article 27, and that the Judiciary has no legal grounds for prosecuting.

[It is considered immoral among religious fanatics for anyone to criticize the religious "law" of the state, and that goes double for women, who are held to be no more than sub-human cattle (or second class citizens if you wish to soft-peddle the issue). Of course, the ultra-self-righteous would never use those words, but that is how women are treated by such people. The fact that such an attitude flies in the face of the teachings of Jesus Christ and the Prophet Mohammed, and constitute blasphemy thereby, by their own rules, never seems to occur to them. --MN]

By David Sirota. His piece, titled On the Big Issues, the NY Times Flips the Bird to Normal Americans, was reprinted at AlterNet.org on this day. In it, he examines three stories printed by the NYT during the week of 24 Feb to 03 Mar, at least one of which appears to stem from a serious disconnect with reality. In that one, NYT referred to the 60 plus percent of Americans who oppose the illegal ongoing occupation of Iraq as the fringe.

[Personally, I'd conceptualize "fringe" as a minority within the minority. --MN]

By the American Library Association. An article at the ALA's web site, posted on this day, reported that their Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) had received 546 challenges over 2006; formal, written complaints filed with a library or school, requesting that materials be removed due to content or appropriateness. The title of "most challenged books" is no longer accurate, however, as some of the challenges were to an entire series. The 2006 ten most frequently challenged individual or series of works is:

• And Tango Makes Three: Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell; homosexuality, anti-family, unsuited to age group;
• Gossip Girls series: Cecily Von Ziegesar; homosexuality, sexual content, drugs, unsuited to age group, offensive language;
• Alice series: Phyllis Reynolds Naylor; sexual content offensive language;
• The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things: Carolyn Mackler; sexual content, anti-family, offensive language, unsuited to age group;
• The Bluest Eye: Toni Morrison; sexual content, offensive language, unsuited to age group;
• Scary Stories series: Alvin Schwartz; occult/Satanism, unsuited to age group, violence, insensitivity;
• Athletic Shorts: Chris Crutcher; homosexuality, offensive language.
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower: Stephen Chbosky; homosexuality, sexually explicit, offensive language, unsuited to age group
• Beloved: Toni Morrison; offensive language, sexual content, unsuited to age group;
• The Chocolate War: Robert Cormier; sexual content, offensive language, violence.

By Mexico. The Mexican Senate, in a vote of 100-0 with one abstention, passed a bill that effectively directs all such cases to civil court. The measure seeks to make Mexican law conform to emerging regional and international standards, and was already approved by the lower chamber of Congress. On 07 Mar, the Committee to Protect Journalists urged President Felipe Calderon to sign the new legislation. CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon commented: "The Senate's approval of these important reforms marks a significant step forward for journalists in Mexico, who have been harassed and jailed under outdated laws for too long." The bill repeals articles 350 through 363 of the federal penal code, but if signed into law, the reform will not offer complete protection because many Mexican states continue to carry criminal libel laws.

By Reporters Without Borders. On this day the organization called for the immediate release of twenty-five women -- journalists and feminist activists -- who were being held in Evin prison, in Tehran. Thirty-three women were arrested on 4 Mar, while demonstrating outside the Revolutionary Islamic Tribunal there in protest against criminal charges brought against five activists who had organised a women's demonstration in Jun 2006. "We call for the immediate and unconditional release of the journalists and activists in custody in Evin prison. These women have not broken any law. They simply exercised their right to demonstrate peacefully." The group also said: "After censoring websites which relay and defend the demands of women's rights organisations, the Iranian authorities have now deprived their main contributors of their freedom."

Scores of journalists and feminist activists gathered outside the Tehran Revolutionary Islamic Tribunal to show solidarity with five women who were on trial for "damaging public order and security", "publicity against the Islamic Republic", and "taking part in an unauthorised demonstration". The five being tried had been charged on 12 June 2006 for organising a peaceful demonstration for reforming laws which discriminate against Iranian women. They were re-arrested when they left court alongside the demonstrators who had come to support them. A total of 33 women were arrested, 22 of them journalists, and were put into isolation cells. Three of them who are ill have been refused access to their treatment. Websites we4change, zenestan, kanonzanan and meydaan, which employ many of the journalists arrested on 4 March, have been censored in Iran after launching online campaigns backing a change in the status of women.

By the Bush administration. See the entry on the Bush censorship page.

By the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. See the entry on the Bush censorship page.

By the FBI, principly. According to an audit by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine, released on this day, the FBI had improperly and in a few cases illegally used USAPA to secretly obtain personal information about people in the United States. Moreover, for three years the agency underreported to Congress how often it forced businesses to turn over customer data. The audit did find however, to the FBI's credit, that the violations of American law and civil liberties were not deliberate; it concluded that the the bulk of the problems was a matter of agent error and shoddy record-keeping, and found no indication of criminal misconduct. Also to the agency's credit, FBI Director Robert Mueller did not attempt to stonewall or duck responsibility, but held himself fully accountability for the lack of internal oversight that resulted in the violations. Another factor to the agency's benefit is the very low rate of incidence of erroneous actions.

[Against the above is an ACLU claim that over a period of three years, 2003 to 2005, the FBI acted on some 143,000 National Security Letters. I don't think very many of those had anything to do with actual terrorism, but, then, neither does the USAPATRIOT Act as far as I'm concerned. And, of course, USAPA was considered flawed from the start due in part to the gag provision which prevents people from even saying that they had been served with an NSL. --MN]

By anthropologist Sharif Kanaana and coauthor Ibrahim Muhawi. For more than 30 years, Professor Kanaana has been collecting and studying Palestinian folk tales so that people at home and abroad would understand the story of his people. This week the Palestinian Authority (PA), under Hamas, added a new chapter: a directive to pull Professor Kanaana's book from school libraries and destroy it. Some comments about the incident, reported by The Christian Science Monitor, are:

• Professor Kanaana:
  • "I don't want to generalize about all of Hamas -- I rather hope it's a unique case, a mistake by an individual. Unfortunately, it confirmed some of the worst expectations people had for this government."
  • "Any folk tales of any people in the world will have an obscene term or two. I recorded these stories in colloquial Arabic in the exact words people use, because otherwise, there's no point."

• Sheikh Yazid Khader, director-general of the PA's Ministry of Education:
  • "The book was withdrawn because of the problems with offensive language which contradicts our beliefs and morals. [...] Our society depends on Islamic values and has for hundreds of years. Our most important objective is to make curriculum adhere to our social values."
  • "This new generation is unable to distinguish between what is harmful and what is beneficial, so we have to protect them from these harmful influences. The Israeli occupation is interested in introducing us to Western values that work to destroy our Arab and Muslim values."

• Yahya Yakhlef, the PA's minister of culture until a year ago: "We consider this an act of ignorance. What we are worried about is that the trends become a normal pattern in our life, and we'll get to the point where we'll be like a Taliban culture. We will not allow medieval values to dominate."

[Funny how that heathen, ultra-militant, Axis of Evil, unreal-religion-of-idolator rhetoric sounds just like good, old boy, down home, family values bullshit. Funny "peculiar", not funny "ha-ha". --MN]

By Dakota County District Court Judge Timothy Blakely. On 08 Mar he dismissed a libel suit against Republican operative Michael Brodkorb; he publishes the Minnesota Democrats Exposed web journal. Public relations executive Blois Olson sued Mr. Brodkorb in Jan 2006 after he suggested that Mr. Olson had criticized the congressional campaign of fellow Democrat Collen Rowley after she refused to hire Olson's firm, New School Communications. The journaler cited an anonymous source and asked why the PR executive hadn't disclosed that when he criticized her. Mr. Olson denied his firm sought the work, and his attorney has said Olson and New School has neither sought or done campaign work since 1998.

Judge Blakely cited New York Times Co. v. Sullivan,the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark 1964 libel decision, in stating that public figures must prove malice or reckless disregard for the truth to win defamation claims; he further ruled that Mr. Olson fit the description of a public figure. Judge Blakely did not rule on whether the reporting was true, but did write that the information and circumstances Mr. Brodkorb had before publishing could objectively lead to conclusions drew, even if the evidence was not clear cut.

By University of Nebraska. The university is not seeking monetary damages, it just wants Homeland Security to stop "unlawfully withholding or unreasonably delaying action" on its petition to allow Waskar Ari, a Bolivian historian and scholar of indigenous people, to enter the U.S. to teach at the school. The defendants are:

• Department of Homeland Security;
• Michael Chertoff, its director;
• Emilio T. Gonzalez, director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services;
• F. Gerard Heinauer, who is in charge of the Nebraska office.

The university decided to hire Mr. Ari as an assistant professor in the departments of history and ethnic studies; he was supposed to teach there from 15 Aug 2005 to 16 May 2008. The timeline for this affair is:

• 13 Jun 2005: University of Nebraska filed a petition Ari would need before he could apply for a visa; an "H-1B" is standard for employers who wanting to hire a foreign professional. The university also submitted a $1,000 fee for expedited processing, which entitled the university to a response within 15 days.

• 31 Mar 2006: More than 9 months after filing the petition the university received a letter from the Nebraska office of Homeland Security's Citizenship and Immigration Services which said the office, "is unable to meet the 15-day requirement". The stated rationale was: "The referenced case is undergoing security checks and is awaiting review and clearance." The office returned the expedition fee.

• 02 Mar 2007: Almost a year after that and twenty-two months after the initial filing, with still no decision, the University of Nebraska filed its lawsuit.

The suit alleges that the stalling: "prevents Dr. Ari from teaching and speaking within the United States and, most importantly, prevents United States citizens and residents—including students and academic colleagues—from attending classes taught by Dr. Ari or otherwise meeting with Dr. Ari to engage in discussion and hear his views, in violation of these citizens' and residents' First Amendment rights."

By Hannah Levinson, Megan Reback, and Elan Stahl. The three young women (aged 16), at Jay High School in Cross River, New York City, were given one-day suspensions for including the word "vagina" in a reading from The Vagina Monologues. School officials had forbidden them to to use the word at the reading, held on 02 Mar. These self-same officials justified their stupidity not as censorship, but as punishment of defiance. The young women acknowledged they were being insubordinate, but correctly pointed out that it is wrong to censor literature and to treat the word "vagina" as controversial. Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues supported their action. Superintendent Robert Lichtenfeld postponed the suspensions before they took effect, then met with the young women on 12 Mar and then spoke with their parents that night. On this day, they recieved letters from the school superintendent lifting the suspensions. Various comments about this matter are:

• Hannah Levinson: I think we did the right thing, and I'm glad to see that the administration sees that we did the right thing. It was educational for the three of us, and I think it was educational for the whole community.

• Eve Ensler: I think it's a victory for free speech. I've always hoped that the play would engender dialogue and education for younger girls around their bodies and their rights.

• NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman: [It's] shocking that school administrators would object to the public performance of a renowned literary work because it contained the word "vagina". Schools should be encouraging students to express themselves freely, not silencing dialogue.

[Remember: Question authority before it questions you. See my commentary on this issue. --MN]

By the House of Representatives. See the entry on the Bush censorship page.

By E.R. Frank. This book is a young adult novel featuring America, a 15 year-old male who experienced a series of traumatic events as a child and is seeking guidance from his psychologist. The novel, which deals mostly with the effects of childhood trauma, was part of a free reading library in the classroom of Cathy Adler, who teaches gifted and talented students at Brown Middle School, in Ravenna, New York State[?]. Angela Calo, mother of a classmember, is asking that the novel be withdrawn from middle schools, at least, throughout the entire district; according to the written complaint submitted to the superintendent's office. The novel, is not on any required reading lists within the city's school district, and before allowing students to read the novel Ms Adler informed apparently told them that the novel had "raw material"; according to Ms. Calo's complaint. The novel talks about child abuse, and sexual and mental abuse, and Ms. Calo contends that it should be intended for college level students or higher. Some comments quoted by the source article are:

• Angela Calo: "What we kept finding and going over was sexual content and profanity. Yes, we decided it was not suitable for any child."

• Ms. E.R. Frank; author, licensed clinical social worker with post master's experience and training in trauma, has been counseling for 15 years: "If a parent chooses to screen what their child is reading it is all right.

  "I don't think one parent's decision should limit others from reading it in the community. My style of writing is that I try to convey as much authenticity as I can. While it is unfortunate and may be disturbing, foul language and clinical references to body parts and sexual violence exist in our world and for our children, which is very sad but it is real. I do not try to write to be a sensationalist."

• Superintendent Tim Calfee: facing his first censorial challenge; he has been with the district six years: "We will review it according to our policy. "[The school administration] is reading the book. The reviews are actually pretty positive."

  "The book deals with problems that unfortunately are all too common in our society but they are types of things you hear about on the news everyday,"

America has received several awards including the New York Times Notable Book Award, and it was a Garden State Teen Book Award nominee; actress and childhood neglect advocate Rosie O'Donnell has drafted a screenplay intended for its adaptation as a film. Ms. Calo also is concerned with two novels expected to be on next year's approved reading list for the school district, "Speak" by Laurie Halse Anderson and "Staying Fat For Sarah Byrnes" by Chris Crutcher. Both also deal with issues of childhood abuse. According to Children's Advantage in Ravenna:

• more than one million American children are assaulted, robbed, or raped each year;
• three to ten million children in the U.S. are exposed to domestic violence;
• more than 25 percent of the nation's youth experience at least one traumatic event in their lifetime.

By Reporters Without Borders. Some thirty activists with the international watchdog group in front of Cuba's stand at the tourism fair in Paris. They unfurled banners, put up posters, and demanded the release of the twenty-five journalists detained there. Four years after crackdown, called "Black Spring" by the group, Cuba still has two hundred thirt-five other prisoners of conscience besides those journalists.

By Howard Vicini. See the entry on the Josh Wolf Affair page.

By the Freedom Forum's First Amendment Center, Sunshine Week, and the Sunshine in Government Initiative co-sponsoring, and in cooperation with the American Library Association, the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government, and OpenTheGovernment.org. The conference is one of the events scheduled during the national observation of Sunshine Week.

By Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting. This group issued a Media Advisory titled Iraq and the Media: A Critical Timeline on this day announcing the launch of a web page detailing the chronology of the corporate press in its blind support of Bush adminstration pro-invasion propaganda.

It's hardly controversial to suggest that the mainstream media's performance in the lead-up to the Iraq War was a disaster. In retrospect, many journalists and pundits wish they had been more skeptical of the White House's claims about Iraq, particularly its allegations about weapons of mass destruction. At the same time, though, media apologists suggest that the press could not have done much better, since "everyone" was in agreement on the intelligence regarding Iraq's weapons threat. This was never the case. Critical journalists and analysts raised serious questions at the time about what the White House was saying. Often, however, their warnings were ignored by the bulk of the corporate press.

This timeline is an attempt to recall some of the worst moments in journalism, from the fall of 2002 and into the early weeks of the Iraq War. It is not an exhaustive catalog, but a useful reference point for understanding the media's performance. [...]

The full timeline can be viewed here: Iraq and the Media: A Critical Timeline

By Inter American Press Association. On this day the group issued a press release concerning its conclusions of a review of press freedoms in North, Central, and South America. A brief rundown of their findings is:

Assassinations and Death Threats

• Mexico: six journalists were killed and two disappeared over the previous six months;

• Haiti: one journalist was killed;

• There were nearly two dozen more cases of reported death threats in:

  Brazil Colombia Dominican Republic

  Ecuador Guatemala Honduras

  Paraguay Peru Uruguay

  Venezuela

  Some of these were related to the reporting of corruption.

Government Interference

In the following countries, efforts at repression consisted of poisoning the well with defamatory public statements against press outlets, threats of punitive legilations, and lawsuits under criminal libel laws or similar suits.

Argentina Bolivia Brazil

Colombia Ecuador Guyana

Nicaragua Panama Paraguay

Peru Uruguay Venezuela

United States

See the International Freedom of Expression Exchange web site for more background.

By the staff of Woodlan Tomahawk. The student paper for Woodlan Junior-Senior High School ran an editorial in the 19 Jan edition advocating tolerance for homosexuals. In an act of sheer, blind intolerance, school district officials told journalism teacher Amy Sorrell and the newspaper staff that Principal Ed Yoder would have the right of prior restraint over all content before future issues were printed. Mr. Yoder also gave Ms. Sorrell a written warning for insubordination and failing to carry out her responsibilities as a teacher. It was reported on this day that Ms. Sorrell had subsequently been placed on paid leave while school district officials review whether her contract should be terminated.

[Addendum (11 Apr 2007:) On 08 Arp, Gene Policinski, First Amendment Center vice president and executive director, wrote in a commentary

One could begin by asking why school officials would react negatively to the column at all. Chase's article contained not a scintilla of vulgarity or obscenity (or libel or slander, for that matter) -- not even a description of homosexuality beyond the phrase "noticing people of the same sex as you." [...]

But react they did. School authorities promulgated a new district policy establishing a rigid system of prior review, declaring principals the publishers of the school papers. And they are seeking to fire Tomahawk adviser Amy Sorrell for not showing Chase's column in advance to Principal Edwin Yoder as potentially controversial, and for "insubordination" in resisting the newly-advanced prior review policy.

[...] As so often happens when government tries to act as a newspaper editor or publisher, the issues get tangled, confusing and counterproductive. Yoder and others are being called censors; Sorrell may lose her job. Students are reported to have stopped work on new Tomahawk issues. All over a student's asking others to be tolerant of those different from themselves. The ironies would be humorous if the issues weren't so serious.

The piece is titled School: "Tolerance" editorial will not be tolerated . Mr. Policinski examines other aspects of the interactions between the school officials and those they are seeking to suppress. --MN]
(see 28 Apr 2007)

By Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., Senior Pastor, Trinity United Church of Christ. See the entry on The Lackey Journalists Affair page.

By the New York City Police. Columbia University journalism students Andrea DeMarco and Gabriella Worman were subjected to arbitrary arrest while shooting a video for a class assignment about crime rates in the Washington Heights neighborhood of NYC. The student journalists were in a lot behind the 33rd Precinct. Officers told them to move as they were not allowed in the lot. They complied and resumed videotaping from the sidewalk. A different group of officers the approached the students, who explained what they were doing there. The student journalists were told, "We're going to show you a view from the inside," and were subsequently:

• taken into custody and put in a holding cell;
• had their camera, cell phones, and personal belongings confiscated;
• not allowed to call an attorney;
• not read their rights;
• released after three hours; and,
• charged with "trespassing".

Paul Levinson wrote in a commentary about this incident:

I'm wondering how on Earth someone can be trespassing when standing on a public sidewalk?

But, more important, this manhandling of student journalists has to stop. I'm teaching a graduate course in "Targeted Writing" myself at Fordham University this term. Demarco and Worman could well have been my students. I take this personally as well as professionally.

One of the worst consequences of September 11 is how it has pushed us closer, in the name of defense, to a police state. A place where journalists such as Josh Wolf get thrown in jail for doing their job, and student journalists such as Andrea DeMarco and Gabriella Worman get hours of jail time for the crime of doing their assignment.

Is the kind of lesson we want to teach our students?

I call upon Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Kelly of New York City to do their jobs - and bring the cops who arrested Demarco and Worman to justice.

[I should point out that the report about their personal property being confiscated is at the very least a hyperbole. Every person being detained in a holding cell has certain items removed as much for safe keeping as anything. And once you are detained in holding, you are permitted only one phone call. Letting a suspect keep a cell phone sort of defeats the entire purpose of that principle. What is key to this issue is: did they get their property back afterwards; a point Mr. Levinson did not cover. --MN]

By Senior U.S. District Judge Lowell Reed Jr. On this day he made permanent a temporary injunction against this nine-year-old law which has never been enforced. He issued this injunction on the grounds, among a number of others, that: 1) software filters would work much better than the law would; 2) COPA fails to address threats that have emerged since the law was written, including online predation at social-networking sites such as MySpace, because it targets only commercial Web publishers; 3) "perhaps we do the minors of this country harm if First Amendment protections, which they will with age inherit fully, are chipped away in the name of their protection." This is the sixth judicial decision concerning COPA, and there is a very good chance that the government will appeal this decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In a strange role-reversal, the government side expressed opposition to internet filters, while the plaintiffs supported the use of filters as being more acceptable than this oppressive law. Judge Reed pointed out the bankruptcy of the government position in his decision when he wrote: "Even defendant's own study shows that all but the worst performing (software) filters are far more effective than COPA would be at protecting children from sexually explicit material on the Web." The ACLU explained its apparent inconsistency by saying that filters are fine as long as nobody is compelled to use them. The plaintiffs have argued that filters work best because they let parents set limits based on their own values and a child's age, but Bush adminstration actions in favour of filtering have required that all publicly owned computers, such as in many public libraries, which are funded in part by federal financing, must have the censorware installed, not just those computers to be used by legal minors. See a history of this movement at The Free Expression Policy Project for more background.

By Allan Uthman, Buffalo Beast. See the entry on The Lackey Journalists Affair page.

By the U.S. Supreme Court. This review stems from the case of Michael Williams who was convicted in Florida for promoting child porn. The conviction was reversed by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which found the pandering provision of that law to be overbroad and impermissibly vague. It ruled that the law criminalizes the speech of someone who touts material as child pornography, that is in fact not pornographic or in which such purported material does not even exist. In the court's view, the pandering provision could apply to an e-mail sent by a grandparent entitled Good pics of kids in bed, which has attached innocent pictures of grandchildren in pajamas; one sender might be a proud grandparent while another might be a convicted child molester who hopes to trade for more graphic photos with like-minded recipients. The Bush administration appealed on the grounds that the 11th Circuit read the law's language more broadly than is warranted. The U.S. Solicitor General's office, the administration's lawyer before the justices, said in court papers: [Congress made clear that] "efforts to stimulate, feed or capitalize on a market for what purports to be child pornography deserve no sanctuary."

[There are already precedents proving out the concerns of the 11th Circuit Court's apprehension; see: Dec 1999 and 20 Jun 2001. Williams seems to have been convicted fair and square of trading in child pornography, but if he was convicted under a badly formulated law, his conviction could be overturned or a new trial might be ordered. --MN]

By a Washington state Senate Judiciary Committee. On this day the committee held hearings over HB 1307, which is to offer both high school and college students protection from censorship under the same statute. Representative Dave Upthegrove (D-Des Moines) introduced the bill in January, hoping to add Washington to the list of the six states that have established similar laws: Arkansas, California, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, and Massachusetts. The bill was approved by the state House of Representatives on 13 Mar. Representative Upthegrove emphasized that the bill will help "clarify" any current laws that offer protection to student expression, which he says are "too vague and too broad" to offer the proper protection necessary for a learning environment. He said that journalism teachers and advisers are still allowed to advise students on content and editing.

Senator Pam Roach (R-Auburn) challenged and questioned the need for the bill, stating that current student expression laws should suffice. Washington Attorney Don Austin, also an adjunct professor of law, agreed with the Senator, saying that the "well-intended" bill "is not well written," and it essentially gives students more rights than professional journalists. Student Press Law Center Attorney Mike Hiestand stated that the root of such comments wat "misinformation" regarding the bill's unimportance and legal liabilities. See the source article for more background; particular about the interaction between proponents and detractors.

[Addendum (07 Apr 2007:) On 02 Apr it was reported that Representative Upthegrove disemboweled his legislation by removing the provision to protect high school students to move the bill out of the state Senate Judiciary Committee by 30 Mar. He agreed to the committee's request to amend the measure so that it will apply only to college student publications, as well as promising to not propose an amendment to reintroduce the deleted provision when the bill is considered befor e the entire state Senate. Opposition to the measure appears to be founded on the vague and ill-defined fear that high school journalism students would be suing their schools right, left, and center, thereby, in my books, showing an utter contempt for the intelligence of young adults. Representative Upthegrove has not given up on the deleted measure; he wrote in a public letter: "Let's get the college portion passed into law and then recommit ourselves to continuing to 'finish the job' in a future legislative session. --MN]
(see 01 May 2007)

By the events leading to his incarceration. See the entry on the Josh Wolf Affair page.

By United Nations Human Rights Council. The council condemned "defamation" of religion in a resolution and called upon member states to ban literature and other materials containing "racist or xenophobic ideas" that might lead to hostility against religious groups. The problem with the resolution, aside from being in diametric opposition to freedom of information principles in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is that it is discriminatory due to not applying equally to all religions. Moreover, the Human Rights Council is currently top-heavy with representatives from dictorial and tyrannical regimes, which was reflected in the vote; the resolution passed with 24 in favor, 14 opposed, and 9 abstentions, and breaks down as follows:

	For		Against		Abstaining
Algeria Azerbaijan Bahrain Bangladesh Cameroon China Cuba Djibouti Gabon Indonesia Jordan Malaysia	Mali Mauritius Mexico Morocco Pakistan Philippines Russian Federation Saudi Arabia Senegal South Africa Sri Lanka Tunisia		Canada Czech Republic Finland France Germany Guatemala Japan Netherlands Poland Republic of Korea Romania Switzerland Ukraine United Kingdom		Argentina Brazil Ecuador Ghana India Peru Uruguay Zambia

By Melinda Burns. Her piece, titled How The Proposed Employee Free Choice Act Could Have Rescued the Newsroom From Its Owner, reprinted at CommonDreams.org, details what happens when any workplace is subverted to profit-mongering, and is one part a call to rein in ham-handed managment with employee-protection legislation. The conflict reportedly began with Wendy P. McCaw, the News-Press owner and co-publisher, meddling with the production of the news in the summer of 2006. Six top editors, a columnist, and a reporter, resigned to protest the interference. In Sep, reporters, copy editors and photographers voted 33 to 6 to join the Graphic Communications Conference. Ms. McCaw filed a challenge to the union vote with the National Labor Relations Board and then fired eight reporters; all of them union activists, including Ms. Burns, a senior writer with 21 years at the paper. Ms. Burns wrote in her piece: In all, 40 people have left the newsroom since early July. The News-Press has only three news reporters today, down from 15 in June.

[Keep in mind that this sort of thing is nothing new in American journalism. Consider these words by John Swinden, then head of the New York Times, when he was asked to toast an independent press at a gathering at the National Press Club in 1953; this is a part of the whole quote: "If I allow my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before 24 hours, my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it, and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press? We are the tools and the vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks. They pull the strings, and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes." --MN]

By his persecutors, who were thoroughly repudiated in the process. See the entry on the Josh Wolf Affair page.

By Wilton High School students. Natalie Kropf, Seth Koproski, James Presson, and their fellow pupils at this Connecticut school compiled the reflections of soldiers and others - including those of a 19-year-old Wilton High graduate who was killed in Iraq - to create their own play. Principal Timothy Canty forbade it. He did so on the grounds that the drama might be painful to those "who had lost loved ones or who had individuals serving as we speak", and also be he believed that there was not enough rehearsal time to ensure the play would provide "a legitimate instructional experience for our students". This act of censorship was covered by Robert Fisk in a a media criticism titled The True Story of Free Speech in America, and which was reprinted at CommonDreams.org on this day.
(see 18 Apr 2007; 10 Jun 2007)

By Flix Club, Cougar Video, CleanFlicks, Play It Clean Video, and CleanFilms, and perhaps others. The U.S. Copyright Act fair use provision reads: "the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of a copyright." The film bowdlerizers who were ordered to cease and desist their copyright infringements of popular fims by U.S. District Judge Richard P. Matsch, in Jul 2006, are now seizing upon the "educational" proviso in fair use to resume renting expurgated films. It was reported in the Daily Herald on this day, that at least some of the plaintffs from that trial are back in business using that proviso as a loophole. The original suit dealt with many intellectual property issues, but focused on artistic control and the legal principle of fair use. The companies expurgating films, however, contend they are legitimately bypassing Judge Matsch's ruling by labeling their practices as having "educational purpose".

[Which, in this editor's not so humble opinion, is bullshit from start to finish. They are producing or renting these censored films as the case may be, solely for business reasons and not in any way for educational purposes. --MN]

By Colorado, Connecticut, Montana, New Jersey, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin. See the entry on the Bush censorship page.

By MySpace subscription holders. In Feb 2006, Shawn Gobert, Greencastle Middle School Principal, discovered a MySpace Web page that was fraudently attributed to him. A.B., a student at the school, and who did not create the page, posted derogatory comments to it concerning Mr. Gobert and the school's policy on body piercings. The state filed a delinquency petition in Mar, alleging that these actions would have constituted harassment, identity deception, and identity theft if they had been committed by an adult. The juvenile court dropped most of the charges, but did find in Jun that A.B. was a delinquent child and placed her on nine months of probation. The judge also ruled the comments were obscene.

A.B. appealed the decision, arguing that her comments were protected under both the state and federal constitutions because they dealt with school policy. On this day, a three-judge panel of the Indiana Court of Appeals ordered the Putnam Circuit Court to set aside its penalty against her. Judge Patricia Riley wrote in the 10-page opinion: "While we have little regard for A.B.'s use of vulgar epithets, we conclude that her overall message constitutes political speech."

By The Thomas Jefferson Center. Issued annually on or about Thomas Jefferson's birthday, the recipients for the 16th awards are:

1. The Bush Administration
2. The National Collegiate Athletic Association
3. The Charles A. Beard Memorial School Board of Knightstown, Indiana
4. The Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations (Pennsylvania)
5. United States Department of Defense
6. The Maine Bureau of Liquor Enforcement
7. The Federal Communications Commission
8. Watson Chapel School District (Arkansas)
9. U. S. Representative Peter King (R., N.Y.)
10. The City Council of East St. Louis, Illinois
11. The Miami-Dade County School Board (Florida)
12. The Administration of Kentucky Governor Ernie Fletcher
13. Ben Davis High School (Indianapolis, IN), Princeton High School (Cincinnati, OH), and Wyoming Valley West High School (Kingston, PA)
14. The Ohio General Assembly

By PEN American Center. This free speech advocacy group announced on this day that Normando Hernández González, will be the recipient of its 2007 PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award. This Cuban writer and journalist is one of those arrested along in the Mar 2003 crackdown on independent journalists and librarians. The award honors international literary figures who have been persecuted or imprisoned for exercising or defending the right to freedom of expression. It will be presented at PEN's Annual Gala, 30 Apr 2007. Senor González is the director of Camaguey College of Independent Journalists, a group that seeks to serve as an alternative to the State-owned press in and around that city.

Freedom to Write Program Director Larry Siems, in announcing the award praised his exceptional courage and integrity: "When the March 2003 crackdown began, Normando Hernández González eluded arrest for 24 hours so he could celebrate his daughter's first birthday, and then he turned himself in. Since then, he has endured abusive treatment in prison conditions that clearly violate international norms, to the extreme detriment of his health. The youngest of the 75 detained in the crackdown, he is in danger of dying from the conditions of his detention. Yet he has refused to renounce his commitment to expand freedom of expression and essential rights in Cuba, publishing critical and personal essays and protesting the treatment of other prisoners. Hernández embodies PEN's highest ideals, and we are proud to honor him as this year's recipient of the PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award."

According to PEN America, as of this date 59 of the 75 Cuban journalists and activists arrested in Mar 2003 remain in prison, and 1,020 writers and journalists are currently threatened or in prison worldwide.

By Robert Cormier. Harford County schools Superintendent Jacqueline Haas removed the book from the high school curriculum after receiving complaints from some forty parents about vulgar language and homophobic slurs. The story is about a bullying victim who is attacked for not taking part in an extra-curricular activity; selling chocolates to raise funds. The book has been commended as a realistic portrayal of the dangers of bullying and harassment. Several parents objected to the some of the content and complained to school officials; at a board meeting during the fall, some parents expressed concern about profanity, sexual content, and references to homosexuality. John Wagner, whose son attends Fallston High, and who was among the complainants, apparently justified the censorship with circular logic; he reportedly said the mere fact that the book generated controversy meant it was better to remove it from the curriculum. He is quoted: "When I spoke at the board meeting last year, I said we don't tell our children to go out at midnight because nothing good can come from it. Offering a controversial book as part of the curriculum seemed to be a similar situation. I'm not an advocate for stopping free speech, but I am very pleased the school system isn't advocating the book as part of the curriculum." The problem with his rationale is that it is the complainants themselves who are creating the controversy.

[And, of course, there is the telltale denial of being a censorsmoron. Remember: Anyone who says "I believe in free speech, but . . . " doesn't believe in free speech. And this action is being driven by content and viewpoint discrimination. Jennifer Ralston, materials management administrator for the county public library, said the book can still be included among collections in school and public libraries. This, however, does not make this action any the less a matter of censorship. The proper response would be to allow for alternative titles. --MN]

By the Roman Catholic Church in Cuba. Vitral (Stained Glass), has long been a unique outlet for critical commentary and analysis on Cuba. A note in the March-April issue states that the magazine can no longer guarantee publication: "for lack of resources"; church activists said the decision was taken under government pressure. The magazine was founded in 1994 by the Diocese of Pinar del Rio in western Cuba, had a circulation of about 10,000, and was considered the best Catholic publication under Cuba's communist system. Church activists said church leaders had been discussing the closing of Vitral for more than a year, and one, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, was quoted: "Because of the sharpness of its position toward the political power and its commitment to civil society, Vitral had become a dangerous stone that worried both conservatives in the church and hard-liners in government."

By Mark Mathabane. Sonny Da Marto, superintendent of Burlingame schools in California, ordered an 8th grade teacher, a Ms. Ramos, to stop using the work in her English classes even though a review committee of parents, teachers, a librarian, a student, and a school board member had approved the book. Mr. Da Marto told the Burlingame school board he would allow an abridged [read: expurgated] version to be taught, but the paragraphs depicting child prostitution were inappropriate for 13- and 14-year-olds. The school board refused to reverse his decision. Kaffir Boy is an autobiographical work about growing up poor and black in apartheid-era South Africa. It was banned after a parent complained about a two-paragraph scene of men paying hungry boys for sex. In Kaffir Boy, Mr. Mathabane recalls being offered all the food he could eat if he went to a hostel to play games with the migrant workers who lived there. He describes seeing other boys, some as young as 5 years old, stripped naked for sex before he fled. Ms. Ramos, whose four classes were about halfway through the memoir when it was forbidden to read it in class, commented about the situation: "The kids were angry. They were frustrated. They were appalled."

by Tariq Ramadan et al. Professor Ramadan spoke to audiences in the U.S. over three days from the 10th to the 12th Apr despite a government prohibition against him traveling to the U.S. Professor Ramadan, now a visiting fellow at Oxford University, spoke from London for the first two days and from Paris on the last day of the event via video-conferencing.

By Charles C. Haynes, First Amendment Center senior scholar. On this day, Mr. Haynes had this commentary on the marketability of hate-speech posted at the Center web site. One of the aspects of this matter that he considered is the Don Imus "Nappy-headed hos" Affair as a sympton of uncivil society. He wrote in part:

Sadly, Imus and Coulter are emblematic of our uncivil times. In the Internet age, the impulse to offend apparently knows no bounds. People feel increasingly emboldened to say or write anything -- however ugly, vulgar or downright hateful. From cyberbullies who harass classmates to anonymous bloggers who assault their "enemies," the anything-goes Web world has raised the bar for what counts as "offensive speech" in America's public square.

Here's the danger: The messier the speech, the louder the clamor for government to clean up the mess. Almost as soon as Imus uttered the offending words, the Rev. Al Sharpton was pledging to take the issue to the Federal Communications Commission. Next thing you know, we'll have congressional hearings on verbal malfunctions.

The only thing worse than an uncivil society is a society where government legislates what is civil.

He then went on to examine methods by which this trend might be reversed. The principle point of his commentary, however, is simply that blaring, brazen, hate-centered broadcasters are profitable. At least until the hatemonger goes too far and it blows up in the face of the bottom line:

But let's be honest: Offensive speech sells. Beginning with his days as a shock jock, Don Imus has a history of sexist, homophobic and racist bottom-feeding remarks that feed the bottom line. The same advertisers who are pulling their ads today have funded similar comments by Imus and his crew for years. And the same executives who feigned outrage when Imus said 'nappy-headed hos' are busy seeking the next flamethrower who can pump up their ratings.

This time, however, even past commercial success didn't save Imus.

By person or persons unknown, within Canada. The Pakistan Post was founded in 1993 by Mahammad Faruqi and serves the North America Pakistani community in Urdu, with a weekly circulation of 75,000; 50,000 in Canada and 25,000 in the United States. On this day, Jawaad Faizi was attacked while leaving the home of Amir Arain, the paper's editor. He was getting into his car when one assailant smashed the windshield with a cricket bat and then beat the reporter. He was then threatened further violence if he continued to write "against Islam" and to criticize Idara Minhaj-ul-Quran, an Islamic aid organisation. The attack took place in Mississauga, a suburb of Toronto, in Canada.

Mr. Faizi suffered an arm injury that left him unable to work for two days. He told Reporters Without Borders that he was certain Idara Minhaj-ul-Quran was behind the attack, and that it was in reprisal against him. Idara Minhaj-ul-Quran is headquartered in Lahore, Pakistan, and has offices in seventeen countries and a representative in Toronto. The evening before the attack, Both Mr. Faizi and Amir reported to the police they had received threatening phone calls, and the day afterwards he received a phone call from the administration at the school attended by his three children; he was aked to keep them at home. On 23 Arp, RSF commented: "The blows and threats against Jawaad Faizi give rise to fears for the safety of foreign journalists in the very heart of their own community. Freedom of expression cannot be compromised and no community, cultural, ethnic or religious justification can excuse violating it. We urge the authorities in Ontario to take this case seriously and to quickly punish those behind this assault."

By Wilton High students and the Public Theater and the Culture Project. Timothy Canty, the Wilton High School principal, unilaterally cancelled the play after a student, whose brother is serving in Iraq, complained that the production lacked balance. The play is a collection of readings that students in an advanced theater class assembled from interviews, letters, and web journals, with, from, and by veterans of the Iraq occupation. Principal Canty, and Wilton schools superintendent Gary Richards, said the student written script did not provide enough context to explore a complicated subject and might be hurtful to families who have lost loved ones in the war. So the play is no headed for a much broader milieu: an off-Broadway production in New York City. It is scheduled to open in June. Oskar Eustis, artistic director of the Public Theater, said he believed it was important to provide a venue for the students, and is quoted: "Just the fact that you have high school students who are willing to take this kind of leap and actually engage in the big issues of the world, they have to be supported."
(see 07 Apr 2007; 10 Jun 2007)

By Heidi Zamecnik of Naperville and Alexander Nuxoll of Neuqua Valley High School. U.S. District Judge William T. Hart ruled in favor of the high school on 17 Apr, on a preliminary injunction that would have allowed the students to wear the shirts the day after the National Day of Silence on 18 Apr. On the Day of Silence, students can refrain from speaking as an effort to protest discrimination against homosexuals. The above message, meant to be worn on tee-shirts, is essentially intolerant. The ruling was handed down in a law suit alleging that Ms. Zamecnik's rights were violated in 2006 when she was forbidden to wear the shirt in school. The Alliance Defense Fund, which is representing the students, will appeal the decision to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The lawsuit itself is still pending.

Jack Canna, an attorney for Indian Prairie Unit School District 204, said banning the shirt was part of a policy "to preserve the notion that kids shouldn't make negative or derogatory comments about other students." Alliance Defense Fund attorney Jonathan Scruggs said the school was in violation of free speech rights by banning the shirt, and is quoted: "The school cannot silence speech merely because some people find it offensive. We believe that's the core of what the First Amendment protects."

[The school is wrong. Yes, this intolerance is vile and repugnant. Tough shit. Get over it. And you can encourage yourself to do so by thinking about how amusing it is that ultra-conservatives who would shit all over the constitution and the Bill of Rights went screaming to the "Left-wing" courts with their "activist judges" to protect their own rights. --MN]

By Wang Xiaoning, imprisoned political activist. Mr Wang was arrested after distributing online articles, in 2000 and 2001, which called for democratic reform and a multiparty system in China. Distribution was via Yahoo! sites. As of this date he is serving a 10-year sentence in China for his activism. He and and his wife, Yu Ling, residing in San Francisco, are seeking damages and an injunction barring Yahoo! from identifying political opponents to the Chinese authorities. The suit alleges that the Yahoo! office in Hong Kong gave the police in China information linking him to the postings. He was arrested in September 2002 and says he was beaten while in detention. A Yahoo! spokesman said the company: "is distressed that citizens in China have been imprisoned for expressing their political views on the internet", but also said that Yahoo! was simply obeying the laws of China. The suit is believed to be the first of its kind made against an American internet company, and is filed under the Alien Tort Claims Act and the Torture Victims Protection Act. Human rights groups say that Yahoo has helped the Chinese authorities identify at least four people, including the journalist Shi Tao in 2004, who have since been imprisoned for voicing dissent in cyberspace.

By The University of Cambridge's Centre for Public Law and the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law (Arizona State University), et al. An article from 12 Feb reported that the two schools had organized a two day free speech conference scheduled to begin on this day. It is to feature six panels examining whether or to what extent restrictions on extreme speech should be allowed in a democratic society. The discussion is to focus on:

• hate speech;
• incitement to religious hatred;
• religious speech and expressive conduct that offends secular values;
• incitement to and glorification of terrorism;
• Holocaust denial; and,
• regulation of the press.

By the state of Cuba. A dissident leader, he was originally arrested on charges of engaging in enemy propaganda and attempted sabotage in 1990, he was released from prison on this day after serving his full term. His release was announced by the opposition group Bitacora Cubana in a statement and confirmed by several rights groups.

By the state of Cuba.

According to Elizardo Sanchez, spokesman for the independent Cuban Commission for Human Rights and Reconciliation, Senor Posada was charged with disrespect for authority and revealing state secrets, and was tried in Havana over the weekend without a defense attorney or family members present. Not only was he reportedly: denied representation at his trial, was also forbidden to even represent himself, removed from the court when he protested, subsequently tried in absentia. A dissident and attorney, he was sentenced to twelve years in prison for painting graffiti and distributing pamphlets with an anti-government message. Senor Posada was detained in the Mar 2003 crackdown and was declared a prisoner of conscience by Amesty International. It is not known as of this writing whether or not the four years of time served will be subtracted from his sentence.

The Cuban Commission for Human Rights and Reconciliation had also criticized what it said was the secret trial of independent journalist Oscar Sanchez Madan, held on 13 Apr. Senor Madan had written about dissident groups and the hardships of life in Cuba, and was arrested on 13 Apr and the tried in a secret hearing later that same day. He was found guilty of "social dangerousness" and sentenced to four years in prison. Senor Madan was also reportedly denied representation.

By Linda Milazzo. In a piece titled Milking The Mayhem and Baiting For More: Inside The Mind of The Media, published at CommonDreams.org, Ms Milazzo tore a strip off the American corporate press for perpetuating the media circus generated by the mass shooting at Virginia Tech University. This media circus was so intense on the day after that Associate Vice President of University Relationships, Larry Hincker, called a press conference to say in part:

"There's not a whole lot of information left at this point to disseminate. The questions and answers, we're going over the same points again and again and again! How I can continue to get your requests for information and your request for interviews? I don't know what the number is here. It's something like 300 to 350 journalists. I couldn't do an interview an hour and get that done in several weeks. From my University's standpoint, we have got to move forward. As you can imagine, we cannot let this horror define Virginia Tech. We're gonna do whatever we can to get this place on its feet again!"

Following this passage, Ms. Milazzo wrote about how Wolf Blitzer, the CNN news anchor, sententiously praised Mr. Hinckner for holding up under difficult circumstances and then blamed the international press for the tremendous pressure the school administration was feeling; completely ignoring the fact that CNN had a half a dozen or so reporters on the site itself. Ms. Miazzo obliquely denigrated the corporate press as "American Media Whores".

By Naif al-Mutawa. The basic premise for this comic book, as reported at The Christian Science Monitor, is as follows:

The year was 1258. Mongol leader Hulegu Khan had invaded Baghdad -- a city that was then a pinnacle of civilization and learning. Legend has it that the attackers set their sights on Baghdad's crown jewel, the Dar al-Hikma library, tossing thousands of manuscripts to a watery doom in the Tigris River.

Fortunately, cunning librarians spirited to safety the precious Noor Stones: 99 gems containing the library's ancient wisdom. The stones remained hidden in the Muslim kingdom of Granada until 1492, when King Ferdinand's Spanish army destroyed the mosque housing the gems. The Noor Stones were scattered around the globe, lost for centuries.

The series is inspired by Islamic culture and history, the title refering to the ninety-nine names and attributes of Allah from the Koran. The series aims to spread a universal message of teamwork in an action/adventure milieu. Naif al-Mutawa is a Kuwaiti psychologist who, while he was treating torture survivors from Arabic states, from 1998 to 2001, saw a need for culturally relevant heroes. After meetings with former executives of Marvel Comics, DC Comics, and Rolling Stone magazine, the project was backed, by the summer of 2004, with $6.8 million from fifty-four investors in eight countries. It was launched in Oct 2005.

The 99 is currently banned in Saudi Arabia where religious censors have accused it of attempting to give a face to God; something absolutely prohibited by Islam. Yet, clerics from Kuwait to Malaysia have approved the series. Financing to the tune of $18 million will come from an Islamic investment bank in Bahrain where the A Sharia board gave The 99 approval for complying with the tenets of Islam. Mr. al-Mutawa says in defence of the series: "I'm not a man of religion, I'm a man of culture. God's main attributes -- generosity, strength, wisdom, foresight, mercy -- what culture in the world doesn't see those as positive?"

By the federal government. On 24 Apr Noor Mohammed Noori, a former Afghan detainee, described to CTV News in detail how eight Afghan police officers pinned him down with iron bars across his arms and legs, and beat him unconscious. He had been turned over to their custody by Canadian Armed Forces servicemen. The Globe and Mail, on this day, obtained a report by Canadian diplomats in Kabul, under an Access to Information request, which indicates that federal government officials knew that prisoners held by Afghan security forces faced the possibility of abuse, torture, and even execution. Initially, the federal government denied the existence of the report on prisoner abuse, but after complaints to the Access to Information Commissioner a heavily censored version of the document was released. In comparing the released version to unedited portions obtained independently by The Globe and Mail, reporters found that some of the redacted sentences made direct references to torture. One sentence among those removed is: "Extrajudicial executions, disappearances, torture and detention without trial are all too common." Another blacked out a sentence stated: "the overall human rights situation in Afghanistan deteriorated in 2006." However, left intact were many references to progress being made, "bright spots", and positive developments in the area of human rights in the country. The report is titled: Afghanistan-2006; Good Governance, Democratic Development and Human Rights.

The Globe report says the blacked-out sections do not appear to address any sensitive issues, and there is no explanation as to why they were redacted. The report makes references to rights abuses by the National Directorate of Security, or intelligence police, the Afghanistan National Police, and the Ministry of Interior. Similar claims have already been made in other major reports by UN Human Rights Commissioner Louise Arbour, the U.S. State Department, the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, and others. However, when the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was asked on 07 Mar whether it had put together its own report, it responsd with a definitive "no". On 22 Mar, the department repeated that answer in a written response to an Access to Information request.

By the American corporate press. On 21 Apr, there was a peaceful protest against the "apartheid wall" in Lebanon. Israeli servicemen opened fire on the protesters. This action was apparently not reported at all by the government-friendly press of the U.S. In his piece, Irish Peace Laureate Shot By Israeli Troops at Non-Violent Protest - Why Isn't This News? , Robert Naiman wrote:

If you listened to Democracy Now on Monday, you already know the following:

Irish Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire was among a number of people shot Friday by Israeli troops at a nonviolent protest of the "apartheid wall" in the Palestinian village of Bil'in, near Ramallah.

But if you didn't listen to Democracy Now Monday, you probably didn't know that.

Maguire was shot with what the Israeli military - and some press reports - misleading [sic] refer to as a "rubber bullet" - that is, a rubber-coated steel bullet.

Why isn't this "news" in the United States? There's nothing on the web sites of the New York Times, the Washington Post, or the Los Angeles Times, not even a wire story.

He then went on to examine some of the ramifications such misrepresentions have for the Middle East situation. Ms. Maguire's take on the incident was posted at CommonDreams.org on 24 April.

[Addendum 12 May 2007: In his autobiography Just Call Me Mike, actor and activist Mike Farrell (M*A*S*H and Providence, among others) confirmed that the Israeli military uses rubber-coated, metal-cored bullets. He wrote that the cores are lead, not steel, and that he had seen such bullets illuminated in the x-rays of Palestinian victims of Israeli military violence on the two separate occasions he visited Palestine. The first of those visits is described on page 212, the second on page 289. Israel might have switched from lead-cored to steel-cored since that first visit, of course. In either event, the use of such ammunition against peaceful protesters is monstrous. --MN]

By East Allen County Schools. Under the terms of a settlement with the school board, Ms. Sorrell is to be transferred from Woodlan Junior-Senior High School in Woodburn, to Heritage Junior-Senior High School in Monroeville. The board agreed to allow her to teach there for three years, but said that under no circumstances was she going to teach journalism; this is one part due to a lack of vacancy, but also due to a machination; Ms. Sorrell cannot apply for any other position during the three years. In a statement released on 27 Apr, Sorrell said she did not agree with the reprimands that are a part of the settlement, but did not have the financial wherewithal to fight it out. The reprimands state that she neglected her duties as a teacher and was insubordinate in refusing to obey school officials' orders.
(see 20 Mar 2007)

By Washington State Governor Chris Gregoire.

Under the new sunshine law, requested by Attorney General Rob McKenna, a state committee is to examine more than three hundred exemptions to the state's public-records act. This is a voter-approved law that spells out which government documents must be publicly disclosed. AG McKenna said the measure would repair years of damage done by laws and rules that keep government information out of the view the taxpayers.

The shield law will protect journalists from being jailed for protecing the confidentiality of their sources. It grants reporters absolute privilege for doing so, the same exemption that is granted to spouses, attorneys, clergy, and police officers. This shield law goes beyond what the courts have ruled is permissible; a less-strict qualified privilege that is based on the First Amendment and common law. The law is designed to protect people who are in the business of gathering ne ws, it does not recognize web journalers or university professors who do not make a majority of their living gathering news.

By Representative Larry Galizio (D-Tigard). The Oregon state House of Representatives Judiciary Committee passed HB 3279, which was introduced on 14 Mar. It is intended to protect both high school and college students from censorship by school officials by strengthening and clarifying free expression protections in the state. It was modeled after a similar bill that was introduced in Washington state. Amendments were added to the original draft, but Mr. Galizio considers them to be friendly to the bill and agreed to them during the hearing.
(see 27 Mar 2007)

By the Bush Administration. See the entry on the Michael Moore censorship movement page.

Originally proclaimed by the United Nations' General Assembly in 1993. Since 1997 the day been marked by the awarding of the annual UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize. The Prize is named in honor of Guillermo Cano Isaza, a Colombian journalist who was assassinated in front of the offices of his newspaper, El Espectador, in Bogota, in 1986 for denouncing the activities of powerful drug barons in his country, and is awarded to a deserving person, organization, or institution that has made an outstanding contribution to the defense and promotion of press freedom anywhere in the world; especially when done in the face of danger.

By Turkey. On this day the Turkish parliament passed a law permitting the government to block websites with content considered insulting to the memory of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of the Turkish republic. This law, Article 8 of Law 5651 on the "Prevention of crimes in the computer domain", is an updating of a 1951 law on "crimes against Atatürk". Law 5651 also punishes "inciting suicide" (article 84), "sexual abuse of children" (article 103), "prostitution" (article 227) and "inciting drug use" (article 190). ISPs are supposed to take the initiative themselves to block access to content, which they then show to a judge who is to rule on whether or not the blocking should continue. It will be the job of a "Telecommunication Council" to identify the user responsible for the content, after which a complaint will be submitted to a "Communication Presidency". Both of these bodies were especially created to ensure implementation the new law.

Turk Telecom, the national telecommunications company, was ordered to block the video-sharing site YouTube on 06 Mar by an Istanbul court because of content regarded as "insulting" to Atatürk. Access was restored after two days once YouTube removed the video.

By the State of Cuba. See the entry on the Cuban Independent Librarians page.

By Robert Kent and The Friends of Cuban Libraries. See the entry on the Cuban Independent Librarians page.

By Heather Morijah. See the appendix on vanity plates.

By Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman. On 04 May 1970, a detail of the Ohio National Guard committed the deliberate and willful murder of four students at a peaceful protest at Kent State University. The crime was covered up for thirty-seven years through the suppression of tape-recorded evidence by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. During this week, that evidence was made public. In their piece The Lethal Media Silence on Kent State's Smoking Guns, published at CommonDreams.org, Mr. Fitrakis and Wasserman write of the appalling ramifications for this lack of coverage:

The fact that the Guard got direct orders to set, aim and shoot flies directly in the face of the official cover story that they were responding in panic to a random shot fired at them, or that they were defending themselves from some kind of student attack. In fact, it seems highly likely no shot ever rang out prior to the order to fire. Nor could the Guard, who killed a student as much as 900 feet away from the rally, say they were under any serious attack from the students.

The Kent State killings are now prominently featured in virtually every history book of the United States used in American schools. The accounts often include the famous photo of an anguished Mary Ann Vecchio crying for help next to the dead body of student protestor Jeffrey Miller. (They were 265 feet away from where the shot that killed Miller was fired.) Rendered into song by Neil Young's classic "Ohio," there are few more definitive moments in the history of this nation.

But meaningful analysis of the implications of this tape has been mysteriously missing from the American media. The Associated Press did carry a widely-runstory about the surfacing of this evidence, as did National Public Radio. But the Columbus Dispatch, in Ohio's capital, buried the report on page A-5 under the innocuous headline "Victim shares audio tape of Kent State shootings." Virtually absent from the major US media has been a concerted examination of the fact that the keystone in this monumental American saga has been re-set. For we now know that a premeditated, unprovoked order was indeed given to National Guardsmen to fire live ammunition at peaceful, unarmed American students, killing four of them. The illegal order to arm the Guard with live ammunition in the first place could only have come from the governor of Ohio. The very loud, very public nod to shoot some "brown shirt" students somewhere in order to chill the massive student uprising against the Southeast Asian war was spewed all over the national media by the second-highest official in US government.

Now the magnitude of Kent State's impact on American politics and culture, already immense, has been significantly deepened. Alan Canfora intends to use this tape to re-open investigations into what happened at Kent State 37 years ago.

But the media's apparent unconcern about confirmation of the official order to carry out these killings may bear a simple message: that we should be prepared for them to happen again.

By Tony Mauro, First Amendment Center legal correspondent. On 05 May, an analysis titled FTC media-violence report acknowledges First Amendment was posted at the First Amendment Center web site. In it, Mr. Mauro reported how the Federal Trade Commission decided not to regulate television show production because of concerns for the First Amendment. He wrote in part:

The commission's decision to step back where other agencies rush ahead came on the subject of violence in the media. In a little-noticed report issued April 12, the FTC said the movie, music and game industries needed to do more in voluntary, self-regulatory ways to reduce kids' exposure to violence. But it said the state of First Amendment law would make mandatory regulation futile and unconstitutional.

"Given important First Amendment considerations, the Commission supports private sector initiatives by industry and individual companies," the FTC concluded. The FTC report stands in contrast to the other report on media violence issued recently: The Federal Communications Commission's April 25 report on violence on television. The FCC argued that in spite of "constitutional barriers" to banning violent programming, court rulings limiting indecent content on television "provide possible parallels for regulating violent television content."

From there he went on to explore the ongoing interplay between the "Harmful To Minors" movement and personal liberty. There is an AP article about the 25 Apr report titled FCC suggests framework for restricting TV violence, also at First Amendment Center.
(see 16 Feb 2007)

By the National Organization for Women. The law suit they launched in 1986 using the the 1970 Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act was finally terminated on this day with a judgement against NOW. U.S. District Judge David Coar cites the 8-0 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court Feb 2006, that federal extortion and racketeering laws cannot be used against abortion protesters. NOW had filed a class-action suit challenging confrontational and vandalist tactics used by the Pro-Life Action League, headed by Joseph Schiedler, to block women from entering abortion clinics. After three hearings, the Supreme Court decided that RICO could not be used against abortion clinic protesters, and sent the case back to the district court. After that ruling, NOW President Kim Gandy said the decision was disappointing as the injunction had decreased violence outside clinics nationally. Mr. Scheidler said the ruling gives abortion protesters more freedom by removing the threat of RICO lawsuits; he is quoted as saying: "It's really about free speech."

[See my commentary on this issue. --MN]
(see 22 Apr 2002; 26 Feb 2003; 28 Feb 2006 08 May 2007)

By David Swanson. In a piece titled Anti-U.S. Uproar Sweeps Italy, posted at AlterNet.org, he reveals how a large protest movement is underway in Vicenza, Italy, which city the U.S. government has as the site to build the largest U.S. military base in Europe. He wrote about the lack of coverage by the North American media and the arrogant imperialism of the United States:

As with the story of the Downing Street Minutes two years ago this week, a major news story and huge controversy in Europe right now is unknown to Americans, despite the fact that it is all about the policies of the American government.

In February of this year, 200,000 people descended on the Northeastern Italian town of Vicenza (population 100,000) to march in protest. Largely as a result, the Prime Minister of Italy was (temporarily) driven out of power. Meanwhile, just outside Vicenza, large tents now hold newly minted citizen activists keeping a 24-hour-per-day vigil and training hundreds of senior citizens, children, and families every day in how to nonviolently stop bulldozers. The bulldozers they are waiting for are American.

The conflict, should it come about, will be as surprising to American television viewers as were the attacks of 9-11, unless someone tells them ahead of time what is going on. [...]

To understand this story it is necessary to be aware of a few basic facts that Americans are not supposed to be aware of, including that our military maintains several hundred bases in other people's countries, and that many of the residents of these countries resent the U.S. military presence. [...]

In addition, it is helpful to understand that Vicenza is a UNESCO World Heritage site, a beautiful treasure of a town showcasing the renaissance architecture of Andrea Palladio. Reflecting on this makes it easier to put into context the proposal for Vicenza from the U.S. military and the reaction of the people who live there.

As of the above writing, the story of opposition to the construction had been carried by only one American outlet: Democracy Now!. Since the story broke in 2006, Vicenza has become a focus for European peace activists, including Americans living abroad, and has been the site of numerous protests and acts of civil disobedience.

[You would think that even the American press would cover a story on international politics if only because so much anti-American sentiment was being expressed. I'm sure the right-wing echo chamber could get all kinds of mileage out of their "why do they hate us?" mantra. --MN]

By Ann Summers Company. The company's promotional literature describes the vibrator as a "deceptively powerful matt silver love egg". The device is innovative in that it comes with a remote control starter, similar to those used to lock and unlock cars. The British made, remote-controlled vibrator has been banned as a threat to national security by the Cypriot military, which says it was concerned the electronic waves will disrupt the army's radio frequencies on the island. Military officials refused to comment on the reasons for the ban, but the government's Communications and Works Ministry said it was a purely military decision; a spokesman commented about it: "We never even saw them, they were banned before we even had a chance to check them, but if issues of national security are at stake then that is not surprising. The military does operate on a different frequency to the general frequency, but they do not share that information for obvious reasons, only they would have been able to decide what SRD's (Small Range Devices) might be a threat and what to do about it." Lizzie Eddleston, of the Ann Summers press office in the UK said: "It is a shame but we have to honour the request and have made it clear that the Love Bug is not for sale in Cyprus. We have been told the electronic waves given off by the 'Love Bug' would affect military frequencies, but we have told locals that we have a lot of other devices that are not banned which will satisfy their needs. After all, it's better to make love, not war."

[I just gotta love stuff like this. A woman could slip one of these into her vagina before going into a board meeting and if the meeting proves to be dull she can just click the remote -- beep beep! -- and it's: Wheeee! I'm having an orgasm while you're boring the shit out of me, you pompous ass! I tend to rank this piece of stupidity right up there with the banning of applause and paper bags as offensive to Islam that was enacted by the Taliban. Personally, I believe the shit for brains in the military command of this islamist country banned that sexual device on an a priori assumption and without having tested the frequencies or transmission range, or what effect the remote might have on military equipment in even close proximity. And the remote couldn't be used to jam transmissions anyway, unless it was constantly transmitting. --MN]

By Tim and Yvette Coil. On 12 Mar, Desert Storm veteran Tim Coil and his wife Yvette were at the Ohio, Stow-Munroe Falls Public Library; she to study up for a test in her University biology class, and he just to read some books. They noticed two military recruiters trying to enlist someone in a nearby room, with a large glass window. She decided to take action; She took out some 3x5 cards and wrote messages to the man being recruited to put them up on the window sill; which action she cleared first with the library staff: "Before I put those cards up, I went to a volunteer and I asked her if it was OK if I put those cards up in the window, and she said she didn't have a problem with that but talk to someone who works there. The next person said it was fine so long as there is no confrontation. And she said, 'Between you and I, I wish they weren't here, either.'" The first two cards read:

• Don't fall for it! Military recruiters lie.
• It's not honorable to fight for a lying President.

One of the recruiters came out and confronted Ms. Coil about the cards, but she refused to capitulate to his intimidation. The recruiter then took the cards and went to see the library director, Doug Dotterer. In the interim, Ms Coil put up another series of cards:

• Don't do it.
• My husband is a Gulf War Veteran. He can tell you the truth.
• To the military, you are cannon fodder.
• Recruiters: You're fighting for my freedom of speech, too!

The library director told them that if they put up one more card, he was going to ask them to leave, and when he left they knocked on the window and urged the man being recruited not to join up. The police arrived soon afterwards. They asked the Coils to leave the building, and they cooperated, but on his way out, Tim called the director a name. the intervening officer told Tim, "One more word from you and I'll arrest you", whereupon he shouted, "Don't let the military recruit people in the library." The police report says he was arrested for "causing a disturbance within a library." Mr. Coil refused to plea bargain at a pretrial hearing on 30 Apr, and he also refused a state offer that was made on this day, to drop the charges if he paid the $100 in court costs.

Attorney William Whitaker, who is representing the Coils, is quoted: "If a statute punishes this conduct, then that statute is unconstitutional since it sweeps protected speech within its orbit. They were engaged in protected First Amendment speech. It's legitimate to use the public library in the same way that the recruiters were using it." The case was scheduled to be heard on 05 Jun.

By the Harper administration. A federal contract employee was arrested for allegedly leaking what is described as a flawed environmental plan, apparently developed, but due to be implemented by, Environment Minister John Baird. The salient points of this arrest that suggest it politically motivated in the interest of creating a chilling effect are as follows:

• The Royal Canadian Mounted Police was called in to investigate and make the arrest raising new questions as to why the issue was not dealt with through standard labour-management practices; this issue has not been clearly explained.

• The employee was not immediately identified by either the government or the RCMP. He came forward voluntarily on 08 May to identify himself as Jeffrey Monaghan.

• RCMP Superintendant Stan Burke issued a statement, saying: "An employee who violates the terms of their workplace security clearance, including the release of secret documents, may be subjected to legal consequences, including criminal charges", but provided no information on what statutes had been violated or what charges were being considered.

• Patty Ducharme, of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, remarked that it was the first time she had ever heard of a public servant in Canada being escorted away in handcuffs. The arrest was made in the workplace.

• Duff Conacher of Democracy Watch added that the incident represents a clear contradiction of the Harper's promise to run an open and accountable government.

Ms. Ducharme commented about the action: I would say that it's definitely an attempt by the Conservative government to scare its employees, to scare them into submission. I think there's an argument to be made there that he was definitely looking after the public interest and the public good as opposed to toeing the Conservative party line." Mr. Monaghan, in his turn, describe his arrest as a "witch hunt" and said in a statement: "What I can tell you is that the proposed charges against me pose a profound threat to the public interest. They are without precedent in their disproportionality, they are vengeful and they are an extension of a government-wide communications strategy pinned on secrecy, intimidation and centralization."

By the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice of Saudi Arabia. In an action that could very well be in violation of diplomatic immunity as well Saudi government policy. The Canadian Embassy booth and LaSalle College had booths at a Middle East Education and Training Exhibition in the city of Jeddah, during the week of 09 Apr to 05 May. The Canadian contingents to attend the event, to recruit students of higher education, had gotten permission from the authorities for the presence of properly attired women to staff the booths. Members of the Commission, believing that to be an affront to the Kingdom's laws of segregation, confronted the personnel, reportedly in an abusive manner, and during which the staffs were mistreated, and shut down the booths.

Some of the commentary about the action includes:

• The Canadian Embassy in a statement released shortly afterward: "The closure of our booth was an unjustified, unprofessional act that damages the image of Saudi Arabia internationally. Prior to the event, we specifically inquired whether women staff would be permitted at the exhibition and were told by the organizers that they would."

• George Chrysomilides, president of the Canadian Education Network: "From what I hear ... the religious police were very rude. They shouted at them in a way that was disrespectful and they shut down the Canadian Embassy booth as well as the LaSalle College booth. We did everything that Saudi rules require. Why did they have to close it down?"

• Tariq A. Al-Maeena, the journalist at ArabNews.com who reported on the incident: "Over a year ago, a government figure no less powerful than the king of Saudi Arabia took it upon himself to invite a delegation of Saudi businesswomen to accompany him on state visits to India and China. The trip was reported by the local press and broadcast media, with pictures of the king with the delegation. Obviously there was no issue of segregation then. So why now, and under whose interpretations of the laws? Why should some people try to undermine any action or policy designed to modernize our society and accelerate the progress of this country? Where do they indeed plan on having this country end up? The suffocating reins of extremism?

  What rights do people have to override established laws? And abuse others along the way?

  This time it was the Canadians who were the target. Who will be next? And will it ever stop? Have they become a law unto themselves? Have they outlived their usefulness?"

Mr. Chrysomilides also stated that this was the first such occurrance in the Canadian Education Network's ten year history at the event.

By the Vashon Island School Board. The student staff of The Riptide wanted to publish an article that had originally been scheduled for the March issue, but had been pulled by Principal Susan Hanson because it concerned a "personnel issue". The student paper took the issue to the school board to get Ms. Hanson's decision overturned, and both sides were given an opportunity to air their viewpoints. While the decision to withhold the piece was upheld by a vote of 4-1, the decision is almost certainly the right one, and the matter was properly handled. Some comments about the process are:

• Board President Susan Lofland: "[E]veryone was respectful and listed [sic] to different perspectives."

• Riptide adviser Greg McElroy: "They did not feel defeated. No one was surprised with the decision. They learned that people will listen to them seriously, especially when they present themselves well. The board clearly did listen to them and respected what they said."

• Principal Susan Hanson: "Although the editors and I disagreed over the appropriateness and legality of the article, they were respectful and we agreed to disagree. I respect it very much, the manner in which they conducted their appeal. They did everything right. I'm very proud of them."

The decision to pull the article, the first time Principal Hanson had done so in nine years as principal, was based on a district policy which prevents personnel issues from being discussed in public. Ms. Hanson also said she met with the school district's attorney and the superintendent before making the decision. While the source article for this entry alluded to the action by the students as "a group of student journalists looking to override administrative censorship", that is clearly not the case from what was reported. This incident is almost certainly an effort to balance the rights of the institution against the rights of the individual under the Ninth Amendment, and was properly prosecuted.

[From what was reported, this is a very fine example of respecting the human dignity and rights and the civil liberties of legal minors instead of just blowing them off as stupid and unimportant kids the way too many administrations do with summary judgements and bullshit attitudes of "we know better because we are older and therefore are necessarily wiser". It is necessary to qualify that statement, however, because none of the mainstream press outlets seems to have bothered talking to the students. --MN]

By Bruce Wilson. In a piece titled Department Of Defense Promotes Christian Right's fake History in Public Schools, he revealed how the American armed forces have not only been subverted into a religious, crusader force, but how it is now also deliberately teaching falsified history to high school students in the Junior Reserve Office Training Corps to perpetuate itself as an army of "God".

By E.J. Montini, The Arizona Republic. In November of 2006, Professor Walter Kehowski, of the Maricopa County Community College District, sent out the text of George Washington's "Thanksgiving Day Proclamation of 1789" and a link to the webpage where he'd found it. Unfortunately for the professor, the site were he found it was Pat Buchanan's; ultra-conservative, biblical-literalist, white supremacists, hate-monger. Professor Kehowski own political views seem to generate a great deal of vigorous opposition. After five recipients complained of being offended by the e-mail, MCCCD found Kehowski guilty of violating the district's Equal Employmen t Opportunity and technology usage standards, and put him on paid administrative leave. His continued employment at the school is currently under review. Basically, he was found guility of workplace harrassment, and, as regards the technology usage standards, inappropriate use of the listserv to which he posted his message. The most telling point about this second aspect of the case is that it appears very much to be a matter of selected prosecution. A number of other faculty members have committed the same offence on a number of occasions, and those have gone unremarked. The first aspect of this affair indicates that it is a matter of political correctness run amok. People clicked on the link to Buchanan's web site and then blamed the professor for they're seei ng what they chose to access.

On this day, Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which is handling the case, reprinted a commentary by E.J. Montini, titled Find the square root of our free speech. He (or she) wrote most tellingly:

Kehowski has gotten into trouble before over his computer use. A few years back, some people where offended by some inflammatory articles about immigration that he posted on his faculty Web page, even though he pointed out that it was "not an official Web site of the Maricopa County Community College District."

Kehowski's problem is that a lot of people don't like his politics. Neither do I.

My support for the irksome professor isn't based on politics, but self-preservation.

The Internet is not an intellectual flower garden. It's a jungle. It's filled with beautiful blooms and exotic creatures, as well as creepy-crawly insects, poisonous plants and wild animals. If we kill the weeds and put all of the toothy beasts in cages, the place will die.

Professor Kehowski has appealed the chancellor's decision and will defend himself at an appeal hearing scheduled for 05 Jun.

[Addendum (01 Jul 2007:) On 25 Jun it was reported at FIRE that the Maricopa County Community College District had reached a settlement that will allow Professor Kehowski to return to teaching classes in the fall. FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said of it: "This settlement is a crucial victory for freedom of expression and fundamental fairness. FIRE is pleased that MCCCD's unjust treatment of Kehowski has finally ceased and that he will now be able to resume his life and his teaching." --MN]

By Open Net Initiative. ONI is made up of research groups at the universities of Toronto, Oxford, Cambridge and Harvard Law School. The group conducted a study of thousands of websites across one hundred twenty Internet Service Providers and found that twenty-five of the forty-one countries surveyed showed evidence of content filtering. As opposed to five years previously, 2002, when only two countries had instituted state-mandated net filtering. A number of European countries and the United States were not tested, according to ONI, because the private sector rather than the government tends to carry out filtering in those places. Also according to the report, filtering had three primary rationales: politics and power, security concerns, and social norms.

Rafal Rohozinski, a Research Fellow of the Cambridge Security Program, commented: "Few states restrict their activities to one type of content. Once filtering is begun, it is applied to a broad range of content and can be used for expanding government control of cyberspace. It has become a strategic forum of competition between states, as well as between citizens and states."

John Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, is quoted: "In five years we have gone from a couple of states doing state-mandated net filtering to 25. There has also been an increase in the scale, scope and sophistication of internet filtering." Mr Palfrey said the report was an attempt to shine a spotlight on filtering to make it more transparent, and is further quoted: "What's regrettable about net filtering is that almost always this is happening in the shadows. There's no place you can get an answer as a citizen from your state about how they are filtering and what is being filtered." The following are countries that use censorial filtering:

Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Burma/Myanmar, China, Ethiopia,

India, Iran, Jordan, Libya, Morocco,

Oman, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea,

Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, Thailand, Tunisia,

Turkmenistan, UAE, Uzbekistan, Vietnam Yemen.

By person or persons unknown. ABC News reported that two Iraqi journalists working for that network's Baghdad bureau were murdered while on their way home from work on 17 May. The journalists were cameraman Alaa Uldeen Aziz and soundman Saif Laith Yousuf. Two carloads of gunmen forced their vehicle to stop, ordered them out of it, then shot them. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, these murders raise the death toll among journalists covering the illegal invasion and occupation to one hundred four.

By Harvey Weinstein. See the entry on the Michael Moore censorship movement page.

By person or persons unknown. The Little Mermaid was created by sculptor Edvard Eriksen in tribute to Hans Christian Andersen. The statue sits on a rock at the entrance of the Copenhagen harbor, and has been there since 1913. It draws an estimated 1 million visitors a year, and is occasionally targeted by vandals. On this day, someone put a Muslim dress and head scarf on the statue. There was no indication as to whether this was a prank or an ultra-conservative effort to cover up the Mermaid's top-free beauty, however, the statue was apparently splashed with red paint on 15 May. In this case, the police "repaired the damage" by removing the clothing.

The statue was similarly "defaced" with a burqa in 2004, but that was done as a political statement on the issue of Turkey joining the European Union. The dissident in that case had left a sign questioning Turkey's bid to join the Union.

By person or persons unknown. Ali Khalil was abducted and murdered in the al-Bayaa district of Baghdad. He and his wife had just left the home of a family member when armed men in two vehicles blocked their route. They bundled the journalist into one vehicle, leaving his wife on the roadside. A number of his colleagues rushed to the neighbourhood to search for him, but the police found his body one hour later; he had been shot several times in the head and back. According to information obtained by Reporters Without Borders, he was probably targeted for writing an article in which he quoted members of parliament calling on the authorities to physically eliminate members of armed groups.

By the Church of Scientology. On this day a piece by Paul Bracchi, of The Daily Mail, was preprinted at AlterNet.org; it is titled 'Tom Cruise's Church of Hate Tried to Destroy Me'. In the article, Mr. Bracchi reveals how he, and others, have been victims of systematic campaigns to silence any criticisms of or investigations into the Church of Scientology. He wrote in part:

My first report - The Secrets of Saint Hill - was published more than ten years ago. Saint Hill is the castle in East Grinstead, West Sussex, where the UK headquarters of Scientology is based.

The backlash was swift.

The first principle of Scientology, you see, is "shoot the messenger". Critics who had contributed to the articles were also targeted. Some of them found Eugene Ingram - who had been branded an "insidious individual" in a court case in the U.S. - on their doorstep.

He "visited" the 77-year-old mother of one of my sources as well as his parents' former home in Staffordshire, and his wife's family.

Ingram knew, of course, that the man's relatives would not "dish the dirt" on my source.

That was not the point. He just wanted to let me - and everyone else who had helped me - know that he was in town. In the parlance of Scientology, this is called a "noisy investigation".

It has only one purpose: to intimidate.

The real victims of Scientology, of course, are not journalists but the parents who have lost sons or daughters to these deluded fanatics.

Their harrowing stories - of which more below - help explain why, in Britain, Scientology is recognised neither as a church nor a charity. It is, in fact, a cult.

He also wrote that the church, ruled to be a cult by a High Court judge in 1984 because of such practices, has been insinuating itself into the British political system in much the same way the Christian ultra-conservative movement in the U.S. has been encroaching on government there.

By Attorney William McCorriston, in a civil suit brought by landowner James Pflueger. On 14 Mar 2006, the failure of Kaloko Dam on Kauai, loosed a 20-foot-high wave of water that killed seven people as they slept. Most of the land surrounding the dam is owned by Mr. Pflueger, who is suing the state and private companies over oversight of the dam. He also faces a criminal investigation and lawsuits over his responsibility for the accident. Malia Zimmerman is a citizen-journalist who reports through Hawaiireporter.com. The site covers politics and business news, frequently from a conservative or libertarian perspective. It began publication in 2002, and Ms. Zimmerman does not consider it to be a web journal, which generally post a mix of fact and opinion. She is editor and reporter for the site, and says she is a legitimate journalist, not just some hack who offers half-baked commentary on the news of the day.

Ms. Zimmerman, acting as a consultant for the ABC network news magazine 20/20, interviewed island residents who said Mr. Pflueger had filled in the emergency spillway with dirt, which some believe may have caused the dam to fail when heavy rain filled up the reservoir. He has denied having filled in the spillway. Mr. McCorriston is trying to get her to testify and to reveal her sources, e-mails, phone records, notes, and photographs.

Hawaii Circuit Court Judge Gary Chang has ordered Ms. Zimmerman to submit to questioning. She can refuse to answer questions, but must explain her reasons for doing so, and the judge would later rule on whether any refusals are justified. Also, there is no journalist shield law in Hawaii. As a result, there will be two issues for Judge Chang to decide: whether or not Ms. Zimmerman is a bona fide journalist, and whether reporters have a qualified privilege to refuse providing confidential information to lawyers in a civil case.

[Crap. Total bummer, bebe. Now I'm wondering just how much I might be "just some hack who offers half-baked commentary on the news of the day". Still, this site is not a web journal in my not so humble opinion; I do not provide the same level of interactivity, nor is it formatted in the manner of web journals. See the source article for more background; also see my commentary on the issue of "real" journalists. --MN]

By the American corporate press. See the entry on The Lackey Journalists Affair page.

By the state government of West Australia. On this day Reporters Without Borders expressed outrage by an egregious violation of freedom of press by the West Australia Attorney-general Jim McGinty who has brought threatened the newspaper The West Australian. According to RSF, unless editor Paul Armstrong is fired, AG McKinty intends to withdraw state advertising and to not implement a proposed shield law that would protect the sources of journalists. The threats were made on 16 May, when he accused The West Australian of dishonesty and failing to respect journalistic ethics. The issue escalated the following day when West Australia premier Alan Carpenter, in addressing the state parliament, personally threatened Mr. Armstrong, calling him dishonest, immature, and a problem for the state. The newspaper's chief executive rejected the attacks and declared his confidence in Armstrong. He is quoted: "Every government would prefer to have a compliant media which simply recycles the government's version of events. However, that is not how The West Australian or any other credible media organisation operates." The West Australian is the state's only daily and is often critical of the government. The Australian federal attorney-general recently announced that he would go ahead with a shield law protecting the confidentiality of sources.

[It seems to me that if the government has a problem with a newspaper, it is because, at the very least, the paper is violating journalistic ethics in its own way instead of in the way the government demands. In this case, I'd say that it is because the paper is respecting journalistic ethics. --MN]

By the People's Republic of China. It was reported on this day that China would not require mandatory, real name registration of web journalers, but would instead settle for voluntary registration. On 23 Apr President Hu Jintao and the Communist Party political bureau met to discuss how to improve control over the internet, saying they wanted to "purify" it. The rapid growth of internet use is worrying to government there, and it has been trying to regulate the network by all possible means. China is still on the RSF's list of the world's 13 Internet enemies, and at least 50 cyber-dissidents are currently imprisonsed there, out of an estimated total of 68 worldwide. In a statement issued on 23 Oct 2006, when RSF first reported this movement, the organization said: "The blog services available in China are already closely controlled. They automatically filter sensitive content and moderators are told to warn bloggers who go too far. Despite these restrictions, the Chinese blogosphere is growing rapidly. But that could be brought to a complete halt by a rule ending anonymity for bloggers. In a country where you can spend 10 years in prison for a few messages posted on the Internet, keeping a political blog under one's own name would be extremely risky.'

[Given the tendency for government to use "voluntary" cooperation in the U.S. as less than subtle form of bullying, I have to wonder how vigorously Chines journalers will be encouraged to "voluntarily" register under their names. --MN]

By Iran.

Reporter Kaveh Javanmard, of the weekly Karfto, was sentenced to years in prison by a court in Sanandej, in Iranian Kurdistan, on 17 May and will serve his sentence at a prison in the northern town of Maragheh, more than 300 km from his family home. He was tried in secret and was not allowed to have a lawyer. The source article for this entry did not say what the charges were or why they had been layed.

Court officials in the southeastern province of Sistan-o-Baluchistan went to the offices of the weekly Ayaran on 21 May and shut it down, saying it would be prosecuted for printing statements by Sunni leaders that were "inaccurate", "likely to inflame the public", and "spread separatist ideas."

In two flagrant acts of disrespect for the concept of dual citizenship as well as press freedom, the government effectively took hostage Mehrnoushe Solouki, a journalism student, and Iranian-American journalist Parnaz Azima by dint of seizing their passports:

• Mehrnoushe Solouki, who has dual French/Iranian nationality, has been banned from leaving the country since she was arrested on 17 February. She had gone to Teheran last December as part of her studies at Quebec University to make a documentary on the aftermath of the 1988 ceasefire between Iran and Iraq. She was held in Evin prison for a month for filming the families of the victims of violence in the 1980s and her notes and film were confiscated. She was freed on 19 March on bail of 100 million toumen (80,000 euros) but her passport was retained, preventing her from leaving Iran.

• The passport of Iranian-American journalist Parnaz Azima was seized when she arrived at Teheran airport on 25 January and has still not been returned, preventing her too from leaving the country. It was also confiscated for three weeks last year by the intelligence services. The judge in the case has demanded bail of 400 million tounen (320,000 euros). She has been interrogated several times by intelligence agents who want her to work with them.

[This contemptous dismissal of dual citizenship was the linchpin in their coverup of the murder of Zahra Kazemi. Oppressive regimes don't like dual citizenship, because, no doubt, it allows people to move beyond their control. --MN]

By Monroe County Executive Maggie Brooks. Ms. Brooks railed against open access policies that allowed adult patrons to ask librarians to unblock pornographic Web sites after a television station aired a report in Feb this year, of patrons viewing adult sites at the downtown library. Ms. Brooks then held 6.6 million dollars in funding hostage to force the libraries to scrap the open access policies. Approximately seventy percent of the Central Library's budget comes from the county. In the face of this blackmail, the Monroe County Library System Board, over the objections of the Rochester Public Library board, approved a new policy that had been recommended by a library task force which had been formed in Feb. This new policy, which is expected to extend to all libraries in the county, calls for using the library's Internet filtering system to block all pornographic sites unless -- after a written request -- an administrator deems a site appropriate for a patron to view. In short, public librarians in Monroe County will now act as government censors.

How the new policy will be implemented and what librarians might deem pornographic remains unclear, and because both library boards did not approve the policy, officials were unsure as to whether it will extend to the Central Library. It is also uncertain what impact the policy will have on existing rules at town libraries, each of which has its own boards. The Rochester Public Library board, which oversees all city libraries, could vote on the policy the week of 27 May - 02 Jun. Its members did not vote on this day, in part because they wanted more time to review the report.

[Bill Smith, the Republican majority leader of the County Legislature and a county library board liaison, is quoted: "If adopting the recommendation is censorship, then this library is already in big trouble, because the act of choosing books is censorship and because you have a (collection) policy that implies and, in fact, results in rejection of material all the time." This is typical of the person who cannot tell the difference between selection and censorship. The filtering movement is censorship, because it requires that a fully franchised adult get permission from a government functionary to view materials. This action is not an implementation of anything new, it is merely a matter of creeping incrementalism; a sliding down the slippery slope. See my commentary Filtering's Not Collection Development. --MN]

By U.S. District Judge William Stiehl. The week previous to this one, Judge Stiehl struck down a Granite City ordinance limiting the types of signs that can be used by protesters. He issued a partial summary judgment, which had been sought by Daniel and Angela Michael, in which he declared unconstitutional a 16-month-old municipal ordinance that said hand-held signs within 25 feet of Granite City parade routes could be not be any larger than a letter-sized piece of paper. Granite City officials had passed the ordinance after protesters got into an altercation with area residents while displaying large photographs of aborted fetuses during the November 2005 Christmas parade. The incident included the Michaels, who head an anti-abortion group. The ordinance stated that sign restrictions for the four annual parades were meant: "to impose reasonable regulations on the use of the streets and sidewalks (and) to promote the public safety, order and enjoyment of parades, when the sidewalks, curbs and streets are crowded with children and families seeking an unobstructed view of the parade."

Judge Stiehl had suspended the ordinance in August 2006 when he ruled that the Michaels were likely to succeed in their claim that the ordinance amounted to a "heckler's veto" preventing them from exercising their constitutional rights because of the reaction by others. It was not immediately clear if Granite City plans to appeal. Moreover, the lawsuit isn't yet over. Both sides must still resolve how the police will ensure the safety of protesters during future parades. The Michaels claimed their civil rights were violated when police failed to properly protect them before Mia Michael was allegedly assaulted while trying to stop another onlooker from breaking a protester's sign.

[And was that onlooker not arrested for destruction of private property? --MN]

By the British Parliament. On this day Reporters Without Borders condemned the British parliament's approval of amendments to the Freedom of Information Act. One such amendment would fordid access to details of expense vouchers by the Members of Parliament. The United Kingdon's Freedom of Information Act, enacted in Jan 2005, allows the public and the press access to most information held by the government, and has allowed the media to get previously unobtainable information. This bill was introduced by Conservative MP David Maclean; it was passed by the House of Commons, the elected lower house, on 18 May. It must still be approved by the House of Lords, the unelected upper chamber. Liberal Democrat MP Simon Hughes has been leading a strong opposition, but the measure could soon become law; supposedly because it is needed to protect the privacy of correspondence by MPs.

By the Oregon Court of Appeals. In the summer of 2003, when a woman in a car pulled in front of William C. Johnson, Mr. Johnson began tailgating her and making an obscene gestures toward her. Using some sort of amplification system, he also uttered a string of insults based on her ethnicity, and speculations that she was lnsbian. The utterances went on for several minutes and drew the attention of other drivers surrounding the two. The woman, who said she felt Johnson was trying to provoke her, left her car to confront him, but her passenger intervened. Mr. Johnson was sentenced to probation and community service for the misdemeanor. He acknowledged saying "something", but, according to Garrett A. Richardson, his appellate attorney, he did not recall using the word "nigger" or the other offensive comments he was accused of speaking.

The Oregon Constitution offers some of the broadest speech protections in the U.S, and Mr. Richardson argued in his client's defence that even if Mr. Johnson had used offensive words, the law under which he was charged violated the Oregon Constitution. He cited the state Supreme Court having struck down laws limiting everything from campaign contributions to live sex shows because they restricted free expression. However, a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals said that prosecutors could pursue charges if they could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the remark was intended and likely to cause retaliatory violence; in short, they upheld the principle of "Fighting Words" as unprotected speech. Mr. Richardson plans to appeal the decision. Roy Pulvers, attorney and expert on the Oregon Constitution's free-speech clause, said the ruling did not stray from cases that focus on a harmful result, not on the insult itself; he is quoted: "It's not sufficient that you are insulted. It's that it's intended to and likely to provoke a violent response. And it's done publicly."

By a jury. Kathleen Ensz was acquitted on 23 May of a criminal charge filed against her after she left dog feces in a political mailing. The district attorney's office, headed by Ken Buck, had offered Ms. Ensz a plea bargain, but she refused it, not wanting to plead guilty to a crime she believed she had not committed. Her defense attorneys had argued that the action was protected by the First Amendment. Ms. Ensz, was charged with using a noxious substance for the incident, which ignited charges of political dirty tricks during a heated campaign. She is a retired French professor and was a volunteer for the Weld County Democratic Party in May 2006.
(see 20 Jan 2007)

By Laura Mallory. See the Harry Potter censorship timeline.

By David L. Hudson Jr, First Amendment scholar. On this date, a piece of his titled Garcetti having palpable effect on public-employee speech was posted to the First Amendment Center web site. This U.S. Supreme Court decision allows for the punishment of public employees whose speach might have been uttered as from a public employee instead of as from a private citizen. Mr. Hudson's analysis could be summed up in these paragraphs:

Traditionally, courts had examined public-employee free-speech cases under the balancing test created by the Court in its 1968 decision Pickering v. Board of Education. Under Pickering, an employee first had to show that his or her speech addressed a matter of public concern or public importance, as opposed to a personal grievance. Then, a court would balance the employee's free-speech interests against the employer's interests in an efficient, undisrupted workplace.

In Garcetti, the Court created an additional hurdle for public employees who assert First Amendment claims. They now must show that they are speaking as citizens instead of in connection with their official job duties. Justice Souter warned that this change drew a "strange line" that could have a negative impact. Others feared that this new employer-friendly rule represented a dramatic shift from the traditional Pickering balancing and would work against outspoken public employees in free-speech cases -- and thereby work against the public's interest in good government, as well.

He then went to cite examples and explore the impact of the ruling in the contexts of those examples.

By Vice-President Dick Cheney. See the entry on the Bush censorship page.

By the Bush Administration. See the entry on the Bush censorship page.

By Valerie Plame. On this day Ms. Plame filed a suit against the CIA in federal court because of its refusal to allow her to publish a memoir that would discuss how long she had worked for the agency. The heart of the complaint is the exact dating her employment there covered. Employees at the agency sign agreements requiring them to submit manuscripts for permission before publication, and Ms. Wilson's suit said she spent ten months working with CIA officials to avoid disclosing national security information. That information has already been set out in an unclassified letter to Ms. Wilson that had been published in the Congressional Record, and is therefore already in public documents. The CIA, however, contends that her dates of service remain classified and may not be mentioned in her book. The book is scheduled for release in October. First Amendment challenges to CIA decisions about proposed books and articles by former employees have not met with much success in the courts. Decisions tend to focus on the terms of the employment agreements and to defer to the agency's judgments about what should be withheld from disclosure. Ms. Wilson's suit, which is narrowly focused on information already published in the Congressional Record, presents the more difficult question of information that was once secret but has entered the public record. The agency admits that the dates of Ms. Wilson's employment was disclosed by mistake, but a spokesman also said that did not mean the information was no longer classified.

[The agency pulled a fumducker and instead of doing the right thing and declassifying this piece of information, they decided to make things worse. Still, they might have a valid point from an intelligence perspective. See the source article for more background, and this article at First Amendment Center for further background. Just for the record: The letter said that Ms. Wilson had worked for the government since Nov. 9, 1985, for a total of "20 years, 7 days," including "six years, one month and 29 days of overseas service." The article at the First Amendment Center quotes CIA spokesperson Mark Mansfield as saying: "The sole benchmark is whether it contains classified information." I would say that the agency is going to have to consider the issue of the book containing an open secret instead. --MN]

By Robert W. McChesney & Mark Weisbrot, Reporters Without Borders, and the American corporate press. See The RCTV Affair page.

By Mark Ames and Alexander Zaitchik, of AlterNet.org. On this day the indy media site posted their article titled Hysterical Western Media Hype Flimsy Cyber War Against Estonia. Over the month of May, some of the web sites of Estonian banks and government offices suffered from Distributed Denial of Service attacks. These types of attacks involve the use of numerous co-opted computers to simulaneously access a site to crash the host or block others from access. Newsweek described the attacks as "the world's first massive cyberstrike by a superpower on a tiny and almost defenseless neighbor". A 17 May ABC News lead by Tomek Rolski went: "It didn't take long for the problem to be diagnosed as a cyber-attack by another country or a very well-organized entity. While no one at this stage will point blaming fingers at any one country, Estonians have little doubt that it's Russia taking revenge." And the Washington Post, published three denunciations of "Kremlin cyber-attacks on official Estonian websites". Post/Slate columnist Anne Applebaum was reported to have gone so far as to call this an "armed attack" on a NATO member, and this is a very serious allegation, aside from the rest of the fear mongering let alone in support of it, in light of Article V of the NATO treaty. That article calls for all member states to rally to the defence of any member that is the target of a war of aggression. As it turned out, it was much more likely that the DDoS attacks were launched by a juvenile cracker and any Russian computers involved had simply been co-opted by stealthware. Which Mr. Ames and Mr. Zaitchik determined by engaging in investigative journalism. At the very least they raised an entire slew of questions that any sane and rational person would probably have asked instead of engaging in conspiracy theory.

By a number of parents in the Coeur d'Alene School District. The five works being challenged are: Fallen Angels, The Chocolate War, Snow Falling on Cedars, Beloved, Dancing at the Rascal Fair, and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Some parents say the books should require parental permission for students to read them. One parent has petitioned the district to require classroom guests and speakers to submit audio and video recordings of their presentations for prior review. The school board was to meet on this day to consider the requests.

[There is no doubt in my mind that this is not a matter of parents looking out for their children. This action quite ignores the fact that any parent can veto reading materials for their own children, but not for any other parent's children. --MN]

By First Amendment Center. On this day the center published an article with the results of a nationwide survey it had commissioned in the rate of incidence of cyberbullying or harrassment at social-networking sites. A movement began in the American government circa Jun 2006 to inflict intrusive and unnecessary regulations on the owners and users of such sites. The results appear to be a damning refutation of the propaganda repeated by those who insist that such legislations actually are needed due to an insanely high rate of incidence. In point of fact, only four percent could say with certainty that they'd been the victim of an untrue and/or offensive comment. Professor Pam Parry, who supervised the survey, wrote in the article:

Significant findings

Only 4% of respondents said they had "been the victim of an untrue and/or offensive comment" on a social-networking site. A majority 50.2% said they had not, but 31.5% said they would "consider taking legal action" if they believed they were misrepresented on such a site.

The notably high percentage of respondents in the "do not know/did not answer" category for the two questions on offensive comments was a result of the survey design. The survey showed 45.8% said they did not know if they had been the victims of such remarks, or declined to respond. But that number was affected by the number of those who had not heard of social-networking sites -- which was 40.2% of the total respondents to the survey. As such, only 60% of total respondents in the survey responded to the two questions on offensive comments.

The survey is described thusly in the report of the results:

The First Amendment Center commissioned the Public Relations Program at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., to conduct a national telephone survey on social-networking groups such as Facebook and MySpace. In order to have a random sample, the FAC purchased random-digit-dial telephone numbers from Survey Sampling Inc. for the entire United States, including Alaska and Hawaii. Under the supervision of Belmont Professor Pam Parry, 25 students called from Oct. 10, 2006, to Nov. 2, 2006. The students amassed a sample size of 727 U.S. adults 18 years or older. The survey has a sampling error of plus-or-minus 4%.

See the source article for more background; it includes a link to a copy of the full results.
(see 19 Jun 2007)

By Tufts University. The university has been embroiled in an assault on free press principles against the conservative student paper Primary Source since students filed two complaints against the journal in response to articles published in 2006 and 2007, which they considered to be insensitive and to constitute harassment. On this day, Student Press Law Center reported that adminstrators were advancing their erosion of the free press by forbidding anonymous speech. The university admnistration now requires a byline with every article, ending a 25-year tradition of unsigned editorials, and are looking to extend the decision to other media on campus, including the student newspaper, The Tufts Daily. This movement goes beyond this issue, however. The Tufts Committee on Student Life, composed of students and faculty members, conducted a five hour long hearing in April -- during which it determined that the articles did constitute harassment and ordered all published material to be "attributed to named author(s) or contributor(s)," -- the committee also recommended "student governance consider the behavior of student groups in future decisions concerning funding and recognition." In short: they voted to implement a method by which press compliance could be swayed through financial blackmail.

Tufts is a private university in Medford, Massachussetts, and exempt from some of the student body protections available to those at public universities. Primary Source editors have filed an appeal with the dean of undergraduate education, James Glaser, and he is expected to release his ruling during this month. The paper is supported by the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts and The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. See the source article for more background.

By Alta Schreier. Miami-Dade County School District was scheduled to ask a federal appeals court for permission to remove all copies of the book from the school libraries in its jurisdiction.

By 6te.net. See my commentary on this issue.

By the U.S. Iraq Occupation Forces Command. In a piece titled Reading The Pictures: Have We Just Seen The Last Combat Injury In Iraq?, originally at Huffington Post but reprinted at CommonDreams.org, Michael Shaw reprinted a report by Michael Kamber about increasing military restrictions to battlefield coverage of the occupation of Iraq. The new restrictions control and derogate from the practice of photojournalism. Mr. Kamber wrote in part:

The embed restrictions have tightened up considerably since I was last here. You now need written permission from a wounded soldier to publish his photo if he is in any way identifiable. and even if his face is not visible. If unit insignias or faces of others soldiers are visible, that also disqualifies a photo from being used, according to one of the highest-ranking PAO's [Public Affairs Officer] in Iraq. As I'm told, the wounded man's family can figure out who he is from the other people in the picture.

[...]

They say it is for the soldiers protection. but the soldiers in the unit I was with -- the one that took the [five] casualties -- loved our story and photos, thanked me and asked me for copies. The grandfather of the most seriously wounded soldier recently tracked me down demanding copies and saying the photos were crucial to his grandson's recovery.

I seriously question who these restrictions are for.

In his report, Mr. Shaw questioned as to whether this photograph, datelined Latifiyah, Iraq, 19 May 2007, might be the last image of a wounded American serviceman allowed out of Iraq by the military command.

[A military command every member of which is supposed to have sworn an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic. As I've asked before, who will defend the constitution from them when they are the enemy of the constitution? --MN]

By the People's Republic of China. In a testament to the effectiveness of government censorship on the Tiannenmen Square massacre, and an illustration of the mindlessness of authoritarianism, three journalists were fired because one of them knew nothing about the massacre. As a result, a one line advertisement paying tribute to the brave mothers of 4 June was published in the Chengdu Wanbao newspaper in Sichuan province. The advertisement was in reference to the mothers of the victims who keep alive the memory of their children and seek justice for them. The Reuters news agency reported on this day that three members of the editorial staff had been dismissed, which punishment was decided on after an official investigation. On 06 Jun, a Hong Kong daily said that the young employee who accepted the ad did not know about the events of 04 June 1989. She did phone the person who placed the ad to ask for an explanation and was told that it was in tribute to the victims of a mining accident. Two other papers were asked to take the same ad but those staffs refused it recognizing the risks involved.

[See Dr. Jiang Yanyong's Letter calling on the government of China to reappraise its position on the Tiananmen Square Massacre. --MN]

[Addendum (22 Jun 2007:) On 12 Jun, Radio Free Asia reported that four other employees of Chengdu Wanbao had been fired for permitting the publication of the announcement. These four were members of the newspaper's advertising department. The three employees who checked and approved the announcement were reportedly not punished. --MN]

by Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting. See the entry on The Lackey Journalists Affair page.

By Wilton High School students, et al. The students at this Connecticut school responded to the summary and arbitrary banning of the play, which they had written, by staging the work, on this day, in the Culture Project, an off-Broadway theater. The play was produced by actor Stanley Tucci, specifically in response to the censorship. After students spent months preparing the play, the school administration simply canceled it. Superintendent Gary Richards wrote: "The student performers directly acting the part of the soldiers ... turns powerful material into a dramatic format that borders on being sensational and inappropriate. We would like to work with the students to complete a script that fully addresses our concerns." As a result of this, the students modified the script so as to perform Richards's letter, illustrating its cold, condescending bureaucratese in stark relief against the passionate eyewitness testimonials of the play. The story struck a chord with Mr. Tucci, who was already producing a video piece about the John Jay High School incident in which two students were suspended for performing an excerpt from The Vagina Monologues; that high school is his alma mater. The production of Voices in Conflict moved the audience to tears and ended with a standing ovation for the teenage actors.

The banning of the play appears very much to be only one aspect of an anti-war opinion censorship movement at the school. Amy Goodman, in preparing her report on this incident and the necessity of producing the play off-Broadway, spoke to some of the student actors about the situation. She wrote about it:

I asked the student actors about their opportunities to discuss the war at school. Jimmy Presson, 16 years old, said his U.S. history class has a weekly assignment to bring in a current-event news item, with one caveat: "We are not allowed to talk about the war while discussing current events." The students said that they can discuss the war in a Middle Eastern studies class, but, they said, it is not being taught this year. "Theater Arts II was the only class in the school where students were discussing the war," Dickinson said. Jimmy added, "We also get to speak about it with the military recruiters who are always at school."

Bonnie Dickinson has been teaching theater at Wilton High School for thirteen years. She and the students were initially inspired to develop the idea for the play by the 03 Sep 200, death of Wilton High graduate Nicholas Madaras. Even Ira Levin, author of The Stepford Wives, commented about the incident in a letter to the editor at the The New York Times. He likened the incident to an effort to impose conformity and subservience on the community and applauded the rejection of these bankrupt concepts by the young adults:

Wilton, Conn., where I lived in the 1960s, was the inspiration for Stepford, the fictional town I later wrote about in The Stepford Wives. I'm not surprised ... that Wilton High School has a Stepford principal. Not all the Wilton High students have been Stepfordized. The ones who created and rehearsed the banished play Voices in Conflict are obviously thoughtful young people with minds of their own.

See the source article for more background.

[Addendum (26 Jun 2007:) On 22 Jun, a piece titled With Iraq Play, Students Act on Beliefs, by Erika Hayasaki of the Los Angeles Times, was reprinted at CommonDreams.org. In it, Ms. Hayasaki writes a tripartite story of this incident as seen from the viewpoint of the censored students. She illustrates how they grew as people by the developing and putting on the play. --MN]
(see 07 Apr 2007; 18 Apr 2007)

By Charles C. Haynes, First Amendment Center senior scholar. On this day a commentary of his titled Would federal hate-crimes law threaten religious freedom? was posted at First Amendment Center. In it, he examines some of the issues involved in H.R. 1592, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007. The U.S. House of Representatives voted to pass the bill by 236 to 180; the bill extends the definition of "hate crimes" to include violent attacks on people because of sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or disability. Not surprisingly, the passage was lauded by homosexuals, transexuals, transvestites, and civil rights advocates, while it was condemned by intolerant ultra-conservatives. Some of the detractors of the bill and their utterances include:

• Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition: Under the cover of fighting so-called "hate crimes," H.R. 1592 will be used to fund anti-Christian, pro-homosexual/drag queen materials for children - and divert scarce federal resources away from fighting Islamic terrorism.

• Evangelical leader Chuck Colson: [the intent is] "to shut down freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of thought. Its passage would strike at the very heart of our democracy."

Mr. Haynes replies to such statements by writing:

But the biggest divide, and the source of the hottest debate, is the issue Colson raised: Will this law lead to restrictions on the religious freedom and free speech of religious people who oppose homosexuality?

To the bill's supporters, the answer is an emphatic no. H.R. 1592 applies only to violent acts, not to speech. To underscore this point, the authors amended the bill to make clear it wouldn't prohibit what the First Amendment protects.

Christian conservatives strongly disagree, arguing that hate-crimes laws in Europe and Canada are used to intimidate Christian pastors who preach against homosexuality. It is worth noting that the case most often cited - the conviction of the Rev. Ake Green in Sweden - ended with his acquittal by the Swedish Supreme Court in 2005.

However much or little religious speech is chilled abroad, the U.S. isn't Europe or Canada. The First Amendment protects all kinds of controversial speech for and against homosexuality - religious and otherwise.

[...]

Moreover, the danger of hate-crimes laws to free expression isn't supported by our experience of living under such laws. Under the present federal hate-crimes law (which covers attacks based on race, ethnicity, national origin and religion) and the 45 state hate-crimes laws (32 of which include sexual orientation) nobody has been convicted of a hate crime solely on the basis of thought, belief or speech.

By Barry Payne. In a piece titled Suppressing Free Speech with Market Power, published by CommonDreams.org, Mr. Payne explains what the sweeping aside of Net Neutrality will mean to the consumer. He wrote, in part:

Imagine that the whole wheat loaf of bread in your favorite supermarket is no longer $2.00. Now it's $5.00 if purchased separately or $30.00 when purchased as part of package bundled with other unwanted food products by your grocer. And it's not available at all if you purchase the $15 base package - white bread only. Now double the effect by applying similar restrictions to producers and sellers of food on the supply side and you have the framework for undermining net neutrality.

[...]

Selling the "exa-flood" myth as a veiled justification for ending net neutrality, the objective is to portray large content items on the internet like digital movies as high-cost "hogs", compared to other content like an equivalent number of email messages.

This implies that SUV owners should pay more for a gallon of gas than drivers of compact cars. Likewise, electric dryers and air conditioners should be assessed a higher unit rate for kilowatts or kilowatt-hours of electric use, compared to users of light bulbs and fans for the same amount of electricity. Consumers with chronic aches and pains should pay more for the same bottle of over-the-counter (OTC) medicine like aspirin or ibuprofen.

Carnivores should pay more for hamburgers and vegetarians should pay higher prices for beans and rice. Etcetera.

He also illustrates how the collapse of Net Neutrality will deepen and widen the digital divide for the primary purpose of putting " . . . a few monopoly dollars into the palms of some media thugs . . . ".

[Basically, Payne paints a picture of the next massive, big-business rip-off of the consumer. The whole of his piece can be summed up in the single line: The "Everything Internet Package" will have what you have now, but at a bargain price of say, triple your current monthly internet bill. --MN]

By China Film. An article at Variety.com on this day reported that more than half of the scenes involving the Hong Kongese pirate lord, played by Hong Kong actor Chow Yun-fat, had been cut out of the film. Including the scene where he recites cantonese poetry. That poem, called Guan Shan Yue (The Moon Shining Over the Mountain on the Border), is by Tang dynasty poet Li Bai (701-762). China Film had initially denied having made cuts, but then declined to comment on a Beijing News report that it had cut scenes involving too much violence and horror; the report also said the cuts make film difficult to follow. The previous installment, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, was banned outright by the Film Bureau because of scenes of cannibalism and ghosts.

By Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. In Oct 2006, Ph.D student Stuart Ditsler posted a quotation from Dave Barry on his office door. James South, head of the philosophy department there, proclaimed the quote was "patently offensive", and removed the quotation from Mr. Ditsler's office door. He also demonstrated the usual censorship attitude by stating: "while I am a strong supporter of academic freedom, I'm afraid that hallways and office doors are not 'free-speech zones.'" FIRE described the ongoing incident thusly:

Never mind the fact that other members of the department had all kinds of materials posted on their doors. Never mind the fact that if Dave Barry's writing was really "patently offensive"—a legal term usually reserved for hardcore pornography—he probably wouldn't be a best-selling, beloved, nationally syndicated, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist.

Despite negative attention from the Associated Press, the American Federation of Teachers and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Marquette has refused to apologize or clarify its stance, insisting all year that South's actions don't really constitute censorship. That's a joke in itself.

The quotation is totally non-partisan and reads as follows: "As Americans we must always remember that we all have a common enemy, an enemy that is dangerous, powerful and relentless. I refer, of course, to the federal government."

By the University of Texas at Austin. The student paper, which has served the campus for 107 years, has been subjected to a prior review policy since 1972; a situation that had become discriminatory due to the inception of student media over the years that were not subject to prior review. The Texas Board of Regents relinquished control of the newspaper and liability for its content to the Texas Student Media Board in Feb, and the student media board voted in Mar to scrap the policy. The change did not go into effect until the summer semester when the paper secured libel insurance. Students at the paper say they do not notice much of a difference; Mike Elliott, the managing editor at the paper is quoted: "Things are going on exactly as they were before. The only difference is my adviser gets to go home early." That statement is clearly misrepresentative, however, as Richard Finnell, who has been adviser of The Daily Texan for 12 years, stated that he worked until 2 or 3 a.m. every day, reading copy on the computer, then on the proofs, then again at the end of the night. He also said that in the 35 years of prior review, advisers never changed content without the consent of the student editors. With the changes in effect, he now reviews stories only when students ask him to.

By theo-political, ultra-conservative biblical-literalists. In a piece titled Public Broadcasting Showcases Christian Right's Fake American History, posted at Alternet.org, Bruce Wilson revealed how the U.S. Public Broadcasting System was to air a documentary on the subject of church-state separation, that is replete with patently falsified history. He also illustrated how this fullscale revisionism is being introduced into society at large and the education system in particular, and then being perpetuated. He wrote in part

If key Democratic Party political advisers buy into junk science based public health policies, and Democratic politicians support such policies, why shouldn't the Public Broadcasting System air a documentary, on church-state separation with junk, falsified American history ?

How does the Christian right advance its ideology and agenda, through electoral cycles and even when the movement's political influence, in Washington, appears (on the surface at least) to be on the wane ?

Well, covertly of course.

Or in some cases, when few are paying much attention, quite overtly. But, we're not living in the old Soviet Union. It's not OK to use American taxpayer dollars to promote ideologically tendentious junk science, nor is it OK for taxpayer money to promote falsified versions of American history. But as Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, "everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts". Falsified history, or falsified science, are just that: fake, and conservative evangelical Christians cannot in good faith support fake history or fake science, nor can PBS officials get away, in the end, with underwriting fake history.

By U.S. District Judge Charles S. Haight. He had ruled in Feb this year that the New York Police Department had acted improperly by videotaping demonstrators at a Mar 2005 Harlem rally and a Dec 2005 march; both had been organized by advocates for the homeless; the first was in Harlem and the second was held outside the home of Mayor Michael Bloomberg. At the time, Judge Haight held that such videotaping must have "a legitimate law enforcement purpose," rather than merely monitor core political activity. On this day he reversed himself on the grounds that uncertainty had arisen about whether the demonstrations had been as law-abiding as the participants maintained in light of new information that protesters might have been disorderly. City attorneys recently filed court papers describing the Dec march as "unruly and disobedient," saying, as examples, that demonstrators had blocked traffic and forced a woman with a baby carriage into the street. Jethro M. Eisenstein, the New York Civil Liberties Union lawyer representing the demonstrators, said they would work to establish that the protests had indeed been peaceful and legal, and also said the plaintiffs would endeavour to prove that the police engage in political surveillance.

City lawyer Gail Donoghue had urged Judge Haight to reverse because police videotaping is crucial to protect public safety, deter terrorism, and to guard against lawsuits based on false claims. She said at the time that the NYPD did not videotape to effect political surveillance. This case has evolved from the Handschu guidelines, which date to 1985 and which require the police to videotape for legitimate law enforcement reasons and follow a procedure that includes getting permission from a police official. The guidelines were loosened up in the wake of the WTC attack to help the police investigate terrorism or terrorism-related crimes. Judge Haight reminded the NYPD in his decision that in exchange for those modifications, the police department "promised to enact (and impliedly to follow)" those guidelines; he also wrote: "If the N.Y.P.D. should break its promise to the court, I am not required to sit idly by with my hands tied."

By New Jersey State Supreme Court. On this day the court rendered a 6-0 decision that reporters could be questioned in court about information that has been published, but related information which has not yet been published is still privileged. Justice Barry T. Albin wrote for the court in its ruling: New Jersey has given the press one of the most expansive privileges in the country. But a journalist may not use that privilege selectively; once a journalist discloses privileged material outside of his newsgathering and news reporting activities, he waives the privilege with respect to what he has disclosed." The ruling involves a libel suit against Andrew Glazer, a former reporter for The Record of Bergen County, who is now with Associated Press. He is being sued for libel by a former city police officer Michael Venezia, who was the subject of what is, at least, a misstatement. Mr. Venezia sought to take a deposition from Mr. Glazer, as well as seeking his notes and any recordings of his interview of Leonia Mayor Laurence Cherchi, who made the utterance. Mr. Glazer refused, citing the state's Shield Law, which is often invoked to protect a confidential source; although in this case Mayor Cherchi was a named source.

With the City of New York. A year after Brooklyn parks commissioner Julius Spiegel shut down an exhibition at the Brooklyn War Memorial. He did so because he considered some of the art pieces inappropriate for families and sexually offensive. The exhibition had opened on 03 May 2006, in a public building. It featured among other things, a sculpture of a hand holding a penis, and a life-size classroom with a live rat as the class pet. Mr. Speigel ordered ordered the building locked on 04 May. The Monday following, Brooklyn College sent movers to remove the art without permission from the artists. on 24 May the show reopened in a different space, but with significant changes from the original. Marni Kotak, art student, said of it: "Many of the original works were lost or damaged. Some students chose to show the damaged work, and some made new pieces in response to the censorship." The students filed a suit, contending that their First Amendment rights were violated when the exhibit was closed and their art was damaged during removal.

Eighteen former graduate art students and a teacher signed a settlement with the city on 31 May 2007, in which the city awarded $750 to each student and the teacher, as well as paying $42,500 in legal fees. For a grand total to the taxpayers of $56,750. More importantly to the students, Mr. Spiegel issued a letter of apology in which he acknowledged the First Amendment violation.

By Delcambre town council, Louisiana. An article reported on this day that the council had voted unanimously to make it a crime to wear low hung trousers that reveal underwear, obstentibly as an indecent exposure law. Town attorney Ted Ayo is quoted: "This is a new ordinance that deals specifically with sagging pants. It's about showing off your underwear in public." Mayor Carol Broussard says he will rubber stamp the law, and is quoted in his turn: "If you expose your private parts, you'll get a fine." An article by Associated Press from 18 Jun, and posted at First Amendment Center, reported that the law reads: "It shall be unlawful for any person in any public place or in view of the public to be found in a state of nudity, or partial nudity, or in dress not becoming to his or her sex, or in any indecent exposure of his or her person or undergarments, or be guilty of any indecent or lewd behavior."

[Okay; Piece of Abject Stupidity Number One: If you are wearing pants your private parts are not exposed. In fact, that goes for utilitarian underwear as well, although some erotic lingerie does not cover up the strategic parts. Piece of Abject Stupidity Number Two: "indecency" involves the exposure of sexual or excretory organs. Underwear is not a sexual organ. Neither is a "butt crack"; it is the anus, not the buttock, which is an excretory organ. Piece of Abject Stupidity Number Three: this action appears very much to be discriminatory in that Broussard also reported stated that the clause about "dress not becoming to his or her sex" doesn't forbid cross-dressing, is quoted: "A dress, I wouldn't find that obscene. As long as he covers himself and it's not too short." Some detractors of this stupidity say that it is racially motivated, as the clothing targeted is particular to the predominanty Black hip-hop sub-culture. I see it as an attempt to supress the youth sub-culture in general. This conclusion is derived from the mayor's denial that the law is racial in nature; he pointed out that white "people" wear low slung pants as well. What he didn't say, or at least it was not reported if he said it, is that such pants are not worn by mainstream, middle-aged adults, but principally by young adults. Some middle-aged males did object, however; workmen whose pants tend to slip. --MN]

By the staff of the weekly newspaper Agos. Arant Dink, Serkis Seropyan, Aydin Engin, and Karin Karakashli were in court on 14 Jun for republishing an interview Hrant Dink, Arant's father, gave to Reuters in July 2006. In that interview, the elder Mr. Dink referred to the 1915 Armenian genocide and urged Armenians "to turn now towards the new blood of independent Armenia, which alone is capable of freeing them from the weight of the Diaspora." For that, received a six-month suspended sentence. His son now faces the same sentence. Hrant Dink was murdered in Jan this year for daring to utter to such an unpopular viewpoint.
(see 19 Jan 2007)

By Gene Policinski, First Amendment Center vice president/executive director. On this day, First Amendment Center posted his commentary, titled FCC chairman pans common-sense ruling on "fleeting expletives", in which he examines FCC responses to a ruling by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. It rejected the agency's decision regarding the on air utterance of profanities Cher and Nicole Richie during music-awards programs. The court went so far, in fact, as to describe the agency's rules as "arbitrary and capricious", and even raised the question of whether its enforcement efforts were simply outdated in light of of new screening technology, and cable and satellite programming. Anti-civil liberties elements condemended this protection of free speech:

• Senator John D. Rockefeller, D-W.Va: "Overnight, the court called into question nearly 30 years of FCC precedents and regulations aimed at protecting children and families from obscene language and indecent programming during family hours."

• FCC Chairman Kevin Martin: "The court even says the commission is 'divorced from reality'. It is the New York court, not the commission, that is divorced from reality in concluding that the word 'fuck' does not invoke a sexual connotation."

  "If ever there was an appropriate time for commission action, this was it. If we can't prohibit the use of the words 'fuck' and 'shit' during prime time, Hollywood will be able to say anything they want, whenever they want.

Mr. Policinski pointed out that these statements basically amounted to hysteria:

The FCC and its supporters now warn us all to be braced for a torrent of profanity and sleaze that will pour forth from television broadcasters and into plasma screens and picture tubes all across the nation. [...]

In reality, all the court did was add a bit of free-speech common sense to the measuring stick used by the FCC to evaluate indecency on live television programming. The ruling neither opens a profanity spigot nor unleashes an indecency torrent.

Speech found to be obscene is, by definition, illegal and outside the realm of protected speech. And the FCC still is empowered by law to act against scripted or planned indecent references to sexual or excretory organs or activities during hours when children are likely to be listening, defined as 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. It just cannot, for now, easily punish broadcasters for "fleeting expletives."

Mr. Policinski also pointed out the one overriding factor that the American right-wing absolutely refuses to acknowledge: Of course, the real power over what's said on television doesn't rest with the FCC or with a panel of judges: "The real deal is you, and me, and our remote controls and Tivo machines. The FCC can fine. But we can decide what to watch and what not to watch, now or next year, regardless of the time of day."

[See my commentary on this issue. --MN]

By Fox and CBS. A new campaign to promote the use of condoms debuted on this day, but fell a-foul of the abstinence only mindset. Instead of focusing solely on sexual health, a permissible issue, this advertisement allowed as to how condoms could also be used as a contraceptive, instead for prophylaxis alone. Both the Fox and CBS networks refused to carry the ads, and also refused to say why. Fox, illustrating a bias against human sexuality, said in a written statement: "Contraceptive advertising must stress health-related uses rather than the prevention of pregnancy." CBS, clearly displayed contempt for First Amendment Rights vis a vis Safe Harbor provisions in writing: "while we understand and appreciate the humor of this creative, we do not find it appropriate for our network even with late-night-only restrictions."

A Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation 2001 report about condom advertising found: "Some networks draw a strong line between messages about disease prevention — which may be allowed — and those about pregnancy prevention, which may be considered controversial for religious and moral reasons." Linda Kaplan Thaler, who is chief executive of the Kaplan Thaler Group, the advertising agency that created the "Evolve" campaign, is quoted: We have to change the perception that carrying a condom for women or men is a sign they're on the prowl and just want to have sex. It's a sign of somebody being prepared — if the opportunity arises — to think about their own health and the health and safety of their partner." The last words on this fiasco, however, goes to two commentators who pretty much echoed each other:

• Mark Crispin Miller, a media critic teaching at New York University: "It's so hypocritical for any network in this culture to go all puritanical on the subject of condom use when their programming is so salacious. I mean, let's get real here. Fox and CBS and all of them are in the business of nonstop soft porn, but God forbid we should use a condom in the pursuit of sexual pleasure."

• Carol Carrozza, VP of Marketing at Ansell Healthcare (Lifestyles condoms): "We always find it funny that you can use sex to sell jewelry and cars, but you can't use sex to sell condoms."

By the Pakistan National Assembly, the government of Iran, and assorted reactionary groups. On 16 Jun, the U.K. announced the awarding of a knighthood to author Salman Rushdie. On this day, the Pakistani legislators voted unanimously to protest the decision, an alliance of six opposition Islamic groups, supporters of Mutahidda Majlis-e-Amal, were to stage a protest over the award outside Parliament House on 20 Jun, the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam called the decision "insensitive", and the Iranian Foreign Ministry itself called it an indication of hostility toward "Islam". In 1998, the Iranian government said it would not seek to apply the murderous religious decree issued by the fanatic Khomeini. This, however, was a political move to begin normalizing relations with the U.K. Some Islamic groups have said that the order is irreversible. See The Salman Rushdie Death Threat Timeline.

[Chalk this up to the longevity of stupidity; having once focused on a thing as target of their pettiness, the intolerant cannot then let it go. --MN

By Kilmer Middle School in Vienna, Virginia. This middle school has a no-touching policy. Officials at the suburban Washington, D.C., school say this ban is meant to avoid dangers such as gang signs in the form of handshakes. They also point out that some girls are uncomfortable being hugged, but are too embarrassed to say anything. Principal Deborah Hernandez said that the no-touching rule is meant to ensure that all students are comfortable and crowded hallways and lunc hrooms stay safe, and that typically, only repeat offenders are reprimanded. Although there was no indication in the source article that he might be a recidivist, Hal Beaulieu was sent to detention for putting his arm around his girlfriend's shoulder at lunch several months ago.

His parents are now petitioning the school board to have this rule reviewed on the grounds that it is too extreme. They told the Washington Post in an interview that hugging is encouraged in their home, and their son has been taught to greet people with a handshake. They also said that while they agree that teenagers need to have clear limits they do not want their son to be taught that physical contact is bad. Mr. Beaulieu at least, respects the intelligence of young adults; he is quoted: "How do kids learn what's right and what's wrong? They are all smart kids, and they can draw lines. If they cross them, they can get in trouble. But I don't think it would happen too often."

By Oregon State. On 14 Jun the Oregon Legislature gave final approval to a bill that would require school districts to devise plans to combat cyberbullying, which involves threats or taunts in electronic formats. This bill is an addition to the state's anti-bullying legislation that was passed in 2001. It is now on Gov. Ted Kulongoski's desk and defines cyberbullying as "the use of any electronic communication device to harass, intimidate or bully." This measure appears to have been passed in response to "We Must Protect The Children" hysteria:

• Kevin Blackwell, a social worker at Hillsboro High School: "I think I hear about some type of cyberbullying everyday. These kids are devastated; it's at such a wide scale."

• Parry Aftab, director of WiredSafety.org, who says she has spoken with thousands of students, and nearly all of them have been victims of cyberbullying: "It's an epidemic. If you can give schools the chance and authority to create a policy, then you can do some serious good here."

To give Mr. Blackwell credit, however, he is not convinced of the necessity for this law, saying that changes need to be made in the home; that adults need to be more tech savvy, and they also need to take the broken friendships and online fistfights that result from cyberbullying seriously.

["Online fistfights"? How in the name of all Hell and Perdition do you have a "fistfight" in a milieu where there can be no physical contact? Seems to me that Blackwell needs to get a bit tech savvy himself. The word for what he is describing is "flame wars". Most flames wars are little more than hissy fits thrown by drooling, subliterate morons who are also loud mouths with a bitch but no brains, and into which the person he addresses allows himself to get sucked. Blackwell was also quoted as saying: "I don't think parents understand how impactful MySpace is, or really what it is. It sounds really trivial to us, but to high school kids, relationships are the biggest thing you have." I don't think that people who short-change young adults understand how resilient and capable they are of dealing with crap like drooling subliterate morons. --MN]
(see 04 Jun 2007)

By the Quebec Labour Relations Board. In Nov 2006, Karine Gagnon of Le Journal de Québec, wrote a report about the potential health threat of asbestos in government buildings. Immediately after publication of the report, a source whom she had cited was fired from the Société immobilière du Québec (SIQ). He challenged his firing at the administrative tribunal. Ms. Gagnon was drawn into the legal battle when lawyers for the SIQ demanded that she hand over all of her research materials for the report, including notes and recordings, as well as reveal the identities of all confidential interviewees. The Quebec Labour Relations Board refused to go along with this demand.

On this day, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression issued a press release commending this decision. CJFE President Arnold Amber is quoted: "This is great news for journalists," said CJFE President Arnold Amber. "It is a further example of how Canadian society and adjudication tribunals are ruling in favour of reporters' rights to keep their confidential sources, confidential. This is the first time that this has occurred at a Canadian Labour Board, but it sets a good precedent which only adds to similar rulings in other courts." CJFE is an association of more than 300 journalists, editors, publishers, producers, students, and others who work to promote and defend free expression and press freedom in Canada and around the world.

By the citizens of Okinawa, Japan. In this case the anger is not over more factual historical admissions of atrocities committed by Japanese troops during World War II, but anger over a decision to tone down reports that the army ordered civilians to commit mass suicide toward the end of the war. Many Okinawa civilians, including entire families, committed suicide rather than surrender to US forces after the Battle of Okinawa. The death toll from that action is placed at 200,000. Eyewitness accounts and historical research say government propaganda led civilians to believe they were would face terrible atrocities if they were captured by US forces, and Japanese troops were reported to have handed out grenades and ordered residents to kill themselves rather than surrender. In Mar 2007, the education ministry ordered publishers to make changes to several textbooks; these books will have to go before a government-appointed panel for approval. The Okinawa state assembly unanimously approved a statement on this day that criticises the move. Okinawa was the scene of one of the war's bloodiest battles; it is one of the Japanese home islands.

The statement by the Okinawa state assembly says: "It is an undeniable fact that mass suicides could not have occurred without the involvement of the Japanese military." Politicians called on the government to "retract its instruction... so the truth of the Battle of Okinawa will be correctly conveyed and such a tragic war will never happen again".

By Chief Magistrate Judge John M. Roper. On this day he rejected a request by the South Mississippi newspaper Sun Herald to view the videotaped beating of inmate Jessie Lee Williams Jr., as well as inmate-abuse complaints. Mr. Williams died from injuries inflicted in the assault two days afterward. The Sun Herald had sued in chancery court to have the documents declared subject to the Mississippi Public Records Act on 31 May, one day after Chancery Judge Jim Persons, of Harrison County, said the materials were public record under Mississippi law. The documents are to be used in the trial of four ex-jailers accused of conspiring to violate the civil rights of inmates at the Harrison County jail. John Richmond, Federal trial attorney, argued that the newspaper shouldn't receive copies of inmate grievance records because other criminal accusations could be made in the ongoing investigation. Judge Roper did unseal several records after the Sun Herald claimed no notice was given in advance for why the documents were being sealed, and recognized that the newspaper had legal standing to ask for what it believed it was entitled to receive, but restricted access to the requested material, saying: "The right to a fair trial trumps all the First Amendment rights you may have."

[A little forcefully put, methinks, but essentially correct. I might have put it as: The right to a fair trial is not overridden by any First Amendment rights you might have. --MN]

By Ann Sparnese, ALA official. At the ALA convention held at the Washington D.C. convention center on this weekend, an ALA official essentially relegated private, Cuban citizens who lend out their personal property to friends and neighbours to the status of unpersons. The freedom of information activist group Freadom had organized a protest of the ALA's intransigence over acknowledging, let alone reporting on, the issue of book burning by the courts of Cuba. Robert Kent, co-founder of Friends of Cuban Libraries was in attendance. He wrote of the event in an e-mail:

At 10:00 sharp I appeared at the entrance to the convention center. Off to one side, Ann Sparanese and a group of the usual suspects were also gathering for a counter-demo. I suspect her pals in the ALA bureaucracy tipped her off when a copy of the protest permit application was faxed to the Convention Center. Anyway, she had about 6-8 people in her group. They handed out flyers and displayed signs and posters saying things like "The Cuban Independent Libraries are a Fraud" and "Defend the Cuban Revolution."

I instructed our folks to avoid confrontations with the Gang, which was generally successful. But when I walked past Comrade Ann, I couldn't resist commenting: "Hi, Ann! Have you burned any good books lately?" She did not respond gracefully to this question.

[...]

As can be expected, a few pedestrians were hostile, but they were thankfully scarce. A funny example of this occurred when I was walking around holding a picket sign saying: IT IS *NOT* A CRIME TO READ A BOOK!, when a passerby wearing convention ID glanced at the picket sign and, while refusing the offer of a flyer, snarled: "I am on the other side!"

[It is difficult to understand why Ms. Sparnese would be so cavalier toward the idea of private citizens unilaterally acting in the capacity of librarians, and why she would lend active support to a book-burning campaign, in light of the fact that it was her activism which brought censorship against Michael Moore's Stupid White Men to a screeching halt. --MN]
(see 07 Jan 2002)

By Russian President Vladimir Putin. He raised the prospect of a return to Stalinist academic censorship after accusing Western publishers of plotting to distort Russian history in an attempt to crush patriotic sentiment in schools, and claimed that a generation of schoolchildren was learning a version of their past that had been deliberately skewed by historians in the pay of the West. He reportedly said, while speaking at a conference: "Many of our textbooks are written by people on foreign grants. They are dancing a polka ordered by those who pay for it. This is undoubtedly an instrument for influencing our country." He also reportedly indicated that publishing houses that did not print more patriotic textbooks would face state censorship.

By CBS Evening News. See the entry on The Lackey Journalists Affair page.

By Nat Hentoff. A commentary by Mr. Hentoff, titled Prosecuting hate crimes, was posted to First Amendment Center on this day. It was originally published by The Washington Times on 28 May. In it, Mr. Hentoff illustrates how so called Hate Crimes trials quickly spiral outward into miscarriages of justice. Miscarriages not only for defendants, but for victims as well.

By the U.S. Supreme Court. On this day the U.S. high court ruled in Morse v: Frederick, which is commonly known as the Bong Hits 4 Jesus case. Some free speech advocates see it as a grevious erosion to the free speech rights of students, while others allow that it is so narrowly tailored it is sufficient unto the day. See my commentary on this issue.

By Oregon State governor Ted Kulongoski. On 22 Jun he signed two bills to accelerate requests for public records and require the release of some information that would otherwise be confidential under attorney-client privilege. After the signing ceremony, he said that Oregon needs to put the public back into its 1973 public-records law, which has been eroded over the years by lawmaker approved exemptions that put various records out of the public reach. One of the bills requires government agencies to respond without delay to requests for public documents, the other requires government agencies to release a condensed version of information they could otherwise withhold because of confidentiality of communications between agencies and the lawyers who represent them.

By the Czech Library Association. See the entry on the Cuban Independent Librarians page.

By the Bush Administration. On this day, an article titled FBI Whistleblower Describes Government Muscle Tactics was reprinted at CommonDreams.org. It details some of the perfidious activity of the U.S. federal government in its efforts to first gag whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, and then try her in such a way that abrogates any possibility of due process defence. Ms. Edmonds was hired by the FBI as a translat or shortly after the World Trade Center attack and was fired in 2002 after reporting a range of problems at the bureau, including:

• slothful, unqualified employees;
• family members of diplomats suspected of spying who translated the wiretaps of their relatives;
• ignored or overlooked intelligence warning of Al-Qaeda's plans to hijack planes and attack major cities;
• evidence of a Turkish bribery ring that, according to some accounts, was connected to then-Speaker of the House Denny Hastert (R-Illinois)

After she blew the whistle she was fired, and then U.S. attorney general John Ashcroft invoked the "state secrets privilege". This little-used Draconian national security measure stopped Ms. Edmonds from discussing what she knew. Even information about her birthday and the schools she had attended became classified as supposed matters of national security too dangerous to disclose. However, all that information was already public and a keyword search turned it up instantly. In fact information about Ms. Edmonds's case was even up on the FBI website for a time. In speaking before a group of librarians on 25 Jun, Ms Edmonds pointed out the silliness of the situation by saying: "It is funny and so very sad at the same time. The next time I'm pulled over by a cop for speeding or at a red light, and they say ma'am can you give me your driver's license, I'm going to say: 'I'm sorry, officer. I can't give it to you. It's classified.'"

Ms. Edmonds also detailed how the government has circumvented to her right to a trial in open court. The following scene took place in an appeals court hearing in her law suit against the FBI. Ms. Edmonds lost that suit, and the Supreme Court declined to hear her final appeal.

"My attorney stood up and argued the case about the state secret's privilege. Then the court asked [us] to step out of the court...while the government argued its side. Can they do this? This is the United States of America. The guards escorted us out and they locked the doors. We don't know what [the FBI attorneys] told the judges. My attorneys could never know what they argued. As far as we know, they could have made the most outrageous lies. There was no one there to challenge them. We assume that they did because a few weeks later the court upheld the lower court's ruling."

By Center for American Progress and the Free Press. The group released a report, on 21 Jun, titled The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio, which sparked a vicious backlash from the American Right-wing. So much so that the Center for American Progress reports that they have never received such vitriol following the publication of previous studies. Some of the points made in the study are:

• Right-wing talk shows do not dominate AM radio because of free market conditions, but thanks to multiple market failures. Worse, those failures represent a strong case for better regulation of transmissions on the public's airwaves.

• The report contrasts the volume of right-wing content with audience demographics: 236 stations out of 257 (90%) broadcast conservativism exclusively, but fewer than half of those listening to the voices of the right-wing self-identify as conservative:
  • forty-three percent of regular talk radio listeners identify as conservative,
  • twenty-three percent identify as liberal,
  • thirty percent identify as moderate.

• It shows that in markets where progressive and liberal talk has proven itself to be competitive, conservative programming still dominates the airwaves: "[A]lthough there is a clear demand and proven success of progressive talk, station owners still elect to stack the airwaves with one-sided broadcasting."

The conclusion is: The market is simply not meeting consumers' tastes. Moreover, the report is a resounding condemnation of ownership concentration in its findings that:

• stations owned by women, minorities, or locally are statistically less likely to air conservative hosts or shows;
• stations controlled by group owners -- i.e.: major corporations -- were statistically more likely to air conservative talk;
• markets that aired both conservative and progressive programming were less concentrated, and were more likely to be the markets with female- and minority-owned stations.

By Bill Moyers. In a piece titled Moyers on Murdoch, Mr. Moyers takes a look at the ramifications of Mr. Murdoch's efforts to buy The Wall Street Journal from the Bancroft family. While Mr. Moyers looks askance at the political bias of the editorial section at the Journal, he lauds the newsroom for its factual accuracy and journalistic independence, and it is the threat to these characterisitcs which concern him. He wrote in part:

Rupert Murdoch has told the Bancrofts he'll not meddle with the reporting. But he's accustomed to using journalism as a personal spittoon. [...]

But the problem isn't just Rupert Murdoch. His pursuit of The Wall Street Journal is the latest in a cascading series of mergers, buy-outs, and other financial legerdemain that are making a shipwreck of journalism. Public-minded newspapers are being dumped by their owners for wads of cash or crippled by cost cutting while their broadcasting cousins race to the bottom. Murdoch is just the predator of the hour. The modern maestro of a financial marketplace ruled by money and moguls. Instead of checking the excesses of private and public power, these 21st century barons of the First Amendment revel in them; the public be damned.

Appendix G1: Censorship by President GeeDubya and company
          1st Term:  2001-2004
          2nd Term: 2005-2008

Appendix G2: George Bush religious initiatives and cover-ups
          1st Term:  2001-2004
          2nd Term: 2005-2008

Appendix G3: Actions to shield George Bush from free speech
          1st Term:  2001-2004
          2nd Term: 2005-2008

Appendix G4: 21st Century COINTELPRO operations
          1st Term:  2001-2004
          2nd Term: 2005-2008

For information about the history of the flag       amendment and the veterans who oppose it       see the ACLU site: