A brief chronological Compendium of a Few Banned or Challenged Works, and Censorship and Anti-Censorship Efforts 01 Jul - 31 Dec 2007

Centuries of censorship not withstanding, we are hardly unambivalent about knowing. On the one hand, Prometheus did his time in chains for delivering science to man. The Bible tells us that to stir curiosity, as the Serpent did, is to corrupt. Eve lusted for interdicted knowledge; this, not sex, was the first sin. But we are also heirs of the Enlightenment, who for three centuries have insisted that to know is a human right, democracy's foundation, and the gift of our heroes. Knowledge is protector, healer, and liberator. --Judith Levine, Harmful to Minors, pg 7

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2007, July 01: A raising of questions as to the worthiness of citizen-journalism

By Gene Policinski, First Amendment Center vice president/executive director. On this day FAC published a commentary titled Fireworks over journalists' donations raise issue of 'journalist as citizen'. While it deals with the question of commercial journalists supporting political parties and activities, it also obliquely raises questions along the same lines about citizen journalists. Mr. Policinski wrote in part:

So what's the problem with reporters donating to political campaigns? MSNBC.com's report suggested no illegality - in fact, the very transparency of the transactions was cited by some journalists who downplayed the idea they had done something wrong. Still, the report adds to the suspicions of those who see media conspiracy in news reports - particularly critics who see a liberal bias.

Some journalism-ethics experts and the Society of Professional Journalists praised the report. Andrew Schotz, SPJ ethics committee chairman, said that "contributing to a political cause clearly damages the credibility of anyone who professes to be a detached reporter of events."

[Note to right-wing nut dip sticks: don't get smarmy; while the overwhelming majority of individual reporters might slant liberal, the corporations that own their newspapers slant Republican/conservative/right-wing. And the contributions of individual journalists is almost certain to be a pittance in comparison to the mega-gobs of money corporations invest in buying politicians. And some of those corporations, politically whorish sluts that they are, shamelessly donate to both sides of the aisle just to hedge their bets. --MN]

By Napa County Superior Court Judge Raymond Guadagni. He ruled on this day that the Napa Valley Unified School District's "appropriate attire policy" violated the free-speech rights of the students. The school's policy, instituted in the 1990s to squelch gang activity on campus, requires the clothing and backpacks of students to be in solid colors, in blue, white, green, yellow, khaki, gray, brown, or black, and without pictures, words, or symbols. Permitted fabrics are cotton twill, corduroy, and chino, but denim is not allowed. Judge Guadagni ruled that the policy violates California law and freedom of speech under the U.S. Constitution. Toni Kay had violated the policy in 2006 by donning Winnie the Pooh-themed socks with the Tigger cartoon character on them, a denim skirt, and a brown shirt with pink border. Her younger sister was cited for wearing a shirt emblazoned with "Jesus Freak."

Judge Guadagni issued an injunction barring enforcement of the dress code when classes start in Sep 2007, and said that the school can ban gang colors or symbols, and can punish students for statements promoting illegal drug use, but not for expressing themselves or taking stands on other public issues. The school district's chief lawyer, Sally Jensen Dutcher, said an appeal was being considered.

[Yeah, gotta watch out for those roving Winnie-the-Pooh gangs; you never know when you're going to be bludgeoned with a plushie Hufflelump. --MN]

By the police of El Salvador. While human rights violations are part and parcel of this country's system of government, on this day it's oppresive tactics reached a new height of absurdity that would be ludicrous under less serious circumstances. On this day, at a demonstration to oppose the privatisation of water distribution, police arrested fourteen people during clashes on the fringe of the demonstration. The detainees were jailed under an anti-terror law that had been adopted this year, and which put them at risk of forty to sixty years in prison. Moreover, one of the detainees, journalist María Haydee Chicas, was arrested while still in her car preparing to get out to film the action. The vehicle's four other passengers were arrested along with her. Approximately one hundred peasants who were due to participate in the forum blocked off several of streets int the town of Suchitoto prior to a visit by President Saca. Initially peaceful, the demonstration turned violent and around 25 people were injured when the police intervened.

By Rory O'Connor, AlterNet. On this day, a piece of his titled The Future of Citizen Journalism was published at AlterNet.org. In it, Mr. O'Connor reports on the Citizen Journalism movement which has been underway in the Republic of Korea since Feb 2000, and how the founder of that movement is attempting to export it globally. He wrote in part:

Last week I traveled to Seoul, Korea to take part in an international gathering of 'citizen reporters' sponsored by an intriguing, cutting edge media firm called OhmyNews.com. OhmyNews is one of the most successful projects in the world involved in the burgeoning field of citizen journalism -- wherein 'amateur' reporters participate in the creation and dissemination of news and information. The brainchild of Oh Yeon-ho, a professionally trained Korean journalist, OhmyNews was launched in February 2000 and has grown rapidly since. Today it boasts nearly 60,000 'citizen reporters' worldwide, who work closely with dozens of professional staff members, creating content for websites in Korean, Japanese and English. Its corporate motto is: "Every Citizen is a Reporter."

Having already revolutionized the media environment in the Republic of Korea, Oh Yeon-ho is equally passionate about spreading the concepts and practices of citizen journalism worldwide. The OhmyNews 'pro-am' concept of combining citizen reporters with trained professional journalists and editors is rapidly becoming a model for other efforts around the world, and its annual forums on the topic are a key way of networking among the field's leading theorists and practitioners.

By McNeese State University. On this day Foundation for Individual Rights in Education announced its Speech Code of the Month for July 2007. This Louisiana public university maintains what it calls "Public Forum Regulations". FIRE says the restrictions are as follows:

• Students may exercise their right to speak and demonstrate in just two areas of the campus;
• students may only speak in the zones once per week;
• and are restricted to a maximum of two hours;
• student groups may demonstrate only once during each session and only in the assigned zones;
• applications to use the zones must be received at least 72 hours in advance;
• the zones may only be used from dawn to dusk, Monday through Friday.

FIRE wrote of the policy:

This outrageous set of regulations is the mother of all free speech zone policies. It is restrictive in every way possible: it restricts where students can speak; how frequently they can speak; how long they can speak; and at what times of the day and week they can speak. As a censorship cherry on top, it requires students to give at least 3 days advance notice in order to speak.

[...]

There is simply no justification for a public university to place such burdensome restrictions on its students' constitutionally guaranteed rights to free speech and assembly. Not only would this policy not hold up in a court of law, but it is also a moral outrage. College is supposed to be a place where ideas flow freely, not where they are so tightly restricted that they can reasonably be compared to the laws of Singapore.

FIRE further pointed out that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, whose jurisdiction includes Louisiana, struck down a much less restrictive policy at Texas Tech University on the grounds that it unnecessarily restricted the student body's right to free speech.

By Arianna Huffington. See the entry on The Lackey Journalists Affair page.

By John Seigenthaler, First Amendment Center founder. On this day Mr. Seigenthaler had a piece titled Revived 'Fairness Doctrine' would be anything but fair published at the FAC web site. In it, he points out that not only would a Fairness Doctrine be unconstitutional, a fact it originally took the FCC fifty years to understand, but it would also be patently silly, as no two administrations would ever agree on what constituted fairness. The new argument he brings to the debate, however, is that such a doctrine, even in the face of the recent study by the Center for American Progress, is completely unnecessary. He wrote in part:

It is difficult to grasp what there is about the Limbaugh-Hannity-Savage syndrome that so frightens Democrats. Despite the rants of Rush and the railing of Sean, Democrats won both houses of Congress in 2006.

Despite their blasts at Bill Clinton during eight years in office that included the Lewinsky scandal, he left the presidency with approval ratings more than double those of the present conservative incumbent.

Despite constant attacks on Al Gore by Rush and Sean in 2000, the then-vice president clearly won the popular vote for president. The Supreme Court, not talk radio, put George Bush in the White House. And Gore's approval ratings today, despite continuing right-wing radio needling, more than triple those of the president. Yes, Sean and Rush have large and loyal audiences. They may vote just as Rush and Sean recommend. But most folks in our media-saturated world, with a multiplicity of sources of information, are uninfluenced by right-wing radio.

As David Obey, the Democratic congressman from Wisconsin, said, "Rush and Sean are just about as important in the scheme of things as Paris Hilton."

Also see House votes to prevent Fairness Doctrine revival, by Courtney Holliday, a First Amendment Center intern, from 02 Jul.

By Corporate Crime Reporter. In a piece titled Corporate Crime Excised from the American Mainstream, reprinted at CommonDreams.org, Corporate Crime Reporter wrote:

If the story is about corporate crime in the United States, "corporate crime" is replaced by the more benign "white collar crime."

But mostly, if the mainstream American press uses the term "corporate crime," it is used to refer to corporate crime committed by foreign companies.

Otherwise, the term is rarely used in this country.

Russell Mokhiber, editor of Corporate Crime Reporter, is quoted: "We don't want to admit that the corporations that bring us the luxuries we love also commit heinous criminal acts. So, we excise it from our consciousness. Don't look behind the curtain. That big giant American corporation isn't committing a crime. Only South Koreans do it."

By Michigan Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop. On this day he restored access to a political web site via the state Senate's Internet server. The week previous to this one, his chief of staff, Matt Miner, had asked the secretary of the Senate to block access to bloggingformichigan.com. The decision was ostentibly made because using "state time and taxpayer money to surf sites not applicable to the jobs staff were hired to execute is not an acceptable use of state time or funds", according to spokesman Matt Marsden. However, Senate Republicans did not block other political Web sites such as michiganliberal.com and the conservative-leaning journal, rightmichigan.com. And supposedly the block was imposed after Republicans saw stories they did not like posted at the site. The move and potential for blockage of other sites drew charges of censorship from Democrats, who say blogs are a legitimate method of communicating directly with the public.

By Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive. See the anti-Bush sentiment suppression timeline.

By former Surgeon-General Richard H. Carmona, et al. See the entry on the Bush censorship page.

By U.S. District Judge Terrence McVerry. In December 2005 Justin Layshock had used his grandmother's computer to create the unflattering profile of then-Hickory High School Principal Eric W. Trosch, Hermitage School District in Mercer County. He wrote that the principal smoked marijuana and kept a keg of beer behind his desk. On 06 Jan 2006, the district suspended Mr. Layshock for 10 days, sent him to an alternative program, and prohibited him from attending his graduation ceremony. Judge McVerry had refused to order the school to let Layshock return that January, alhtough the district eventually let him back and he graduated in 2006. The ACLU sued the school district, Superintendent Karen Ionta, Principal Trosch, and co-principal Chris Gill, on Mr. Layshock's behalf.

On this day, Judge McVerry dismissed Ionta, Trosch and Gill from the case, but said a trial was necessary to determine compensatory damages. He said that Hermitage School District failed to show that Mr. Layshock's parody profile had substantially disrupted school operations, and wrote in his opinion:

"The school's right to maintain an environment conducive to learning does not trump Justin's First Amendment right to freedom of expression based on the evidentiary record in this case.

"The mere fact that the Internet may be accessed at school does not authorize school officials to become censors of the World Wide Web.

"Public schools are vital institutions, but their reach is not unlimited."

Judge McVerry also said that "while the profile is certainly juvenile and lacks serious value," it was not obscene, despite that claim by district officials.

By Larry Flynt. The publisher of pornography magazine Hustler, he fought off congressional efforts to censor his magazine -- and reportedly to imprison him -- for some fifteen years. On this day he held a press conference at his Hustler headquarters in Beverly Hills to field questions about a movement he launched against censorsial officials, and to drop tantalizing hints to the assembled reporters about promising leads generated by his 03 Jun advertisement. In that advertisement, in the Washington Post, he offered 1 million USD to any reliable source who provided "documented evidence of illicit sexual or intimate relations with a Congressperson, Senator or other prominent officeholder." His action has already seen Louisiana Senator David Vitter confess that in 2001 he patronized "D.C. Madam" Debra Jean Palfrey's escort service.

Mr. Flynt promised that all cases would be carefully conducted -- twenty some are currently running and apparently promise to be productive -- and stressed that he doesn't care about the sex lives of elected officials as such; the mission is to expose those in power who publicly profess to lead a particular kind of life while contradicting their own moral codes in private; as well as, as in Senator Vitter's case, attempting to legislate how others should conduct their sex lives. Some of the comments Mr. Flynt made during a question and answer session are:

When asked whether his campaign has partisan leanings:

"Republicans are more fun, because they get caught so easy and live a repressed life."

If he wasn't himself on a moral rampage:

"The government, for a total of about 15 years, did everything they could to put me in prison [for publishing Hustler]. You've got people who don't have an ounce of the character that I have that are running our government. And I'm saying, this is payback time -- and payback's a bitch!"

By the right-wing friendly press. See the entry on the Michael Moore censorship movement page.

By the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Sureté du Québec, and the United States Army, within Canada. The Council of Canadians has been told it will not be allowed to rent a municipal community centre for a public forum it had planned to coincide with the next Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) summit in Montebello, Quebec, to be held on 20-21 Aug. The Council was told by the Municipality of Papineauville, which is about six kilometres from Montebello, that the RCMP, the SQ, and the U.S. Army forbid the municipality to rent the Centre Communautaire de Papineauville for a public forum on 19 Aug, the day before the Security and Prosperity Partnership Leaders Summit. Brent Patterson, director of organizing with the Council of Canadians, commented: "It is deplorable that we are being prevented from bringing together a panel of writers, academics and parliamentarians to share their concerns about the Security and Prosperity Partnership with Canadians. Meanwhile, six kilometres away, corporate leaders from the United States, Mexico and Canada will have unimpeded access to our political leaders."

Moreover, the RCMP and the SQ will be enforcing a 25-kilometre security perimeter around the milieu. According to officials, there will be checkpoints at the towns of Thurso and Hawkesbury, and vehicles carrying more than five people will be turned back. The SPP was launched on 23Mar 2005 at a meeting between George Bush, then Prime Minister Paul Martin, and Mexican President Vicente Fox in Waco, Texas. The meeting ended with the signing of what was called the Security and Prosperity Partnership, which set up a series of working groups to study cooperation in transportation, energy, aviation, the environment, and more. The movement is touted as a benign and slow-moving attempt to coordinate trade and security policies in a bid to improve the lives of people throughout North America.

[We the people of Canada, are being forbidden by a foreign government and our own elected government, from having contact with our government and a say in what policies it will implement and that may be used to fuck us over for years to come. J'accuse Prime Minister Stephen Harper of treason most foul. And if this is supposed to improve the lives of people, how come only corporations are being allowed to participate in it? And I don't think much of "security" measures that will strip me of my human rights and civil liberties the way the Bush regime has done in the U.S. --MN]

By Governor Ted Kulongoski. House Bill 3279 will become the first state law to protect both high school and college student publications under a single statute, and the first measure enacted since 1995 that protects the free press rights of high school students. His signing comes after a series of unexpected delays. The bill, though originally slated to take effect on 01 Jul, went into effect immediately.

In response to criticisms that the amended bill is significantly less protective than original proposed, Representative Larry Galizio (D-Tigard), who modeled the legislation after a bill introduced in Washington state, said that he he plans to introduce additional student press rights legislation after the summer recess. The watered down version is the result of:

• The House Judiciary Committee:
  • amended the bill by removing advertising from a list of protected expressions for high school students,
  • and deleted a clause that would have allowed for the awarding of attorney's fees and costs to students who successfully sue their school for violations of the law.

• The Senate Judiciary Committee:
  • removed a provision designating college publications as public forums,
  • discarded a guarantee that student media advisers who refuse to censor student publications cannot be fired or transferred.

Representative Galizio's plans for future bills are not yet concrete, but he hopes to introduce legislation that will protect journalism teachers and advisers from punishment for refusing to censor student media.

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

By the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. The CRTC regulates broadcast and telecommunications systems, and is scheduled to hold a hearing in Gatineau, Quebec, in Sep 2007 on how to ensure a diversity of voices in our media. Media ownership is reportedly more highly concentrated in Canada than almost anywhere else in the industrialized world. Almost all private television stations in Canada are owned by national media conglomerates, and due to increasing cross-ownership most of the daily newspapers are owned by the same corporations that own television and radio stations.

By Representative Doug Lamborn, R-Colo. See the entry on the Bush censorship page.

By Lake County Library System, Florida. In Apr, an adult at the Astor Public Library witnessed two library patrons who appeared to be no more than eleven year old borrowing a DVD of Jackass: Number Two, which is R-rated. Her objections triggered a review of the system's loans policy. The week previous to this one, the county's library advisory board voted 9-0 to recommend that against enacting a policy that would bar anyone younger than 17 from checking out restricted movies. County commi ssioners were expected to take up the decision on this day, and they were also expected to adopt the recommendation.

At least two court decisions address issues involved in the panel's recommendation. Firstly: a 1970 U.S. District Court ruling that a Kenosha, Wis., ordinance could not prevent minors from watching movies based on ratings from the Motion Picture Association of America; although movie theaters can deny children admission to those movies, government-funded libraries can't legally stop children from checking them out. Secondly: in 2006, in another federal case, a judge held that Minnesota cannot use industry ratings to fine children for renting or buying certain video games. Some of the pro-freedom-of-information commentary concerning this issue includes:

• Commission Chairman Welton Cadwell, liaison for the library advisory board:
  • "You kind of start going down a slippery slope [by creating restrictions]. Some of our greatest literary pieces would probably be considered R-rated."
  • "We could do it and have somebody challenge us. But why do that when there's already case law out there?"

• Assistant County Attorney Kimberly Williams, who gave a legal opinion for the advisory board:
  • in reference to the 1970 ruling: "A public library is a limited public forum, and children have a First Amendment right to access information from a library. You don't have a constitutional right to go to a private movie theater."
  • "It's an unconstitutional delegation of authority for the county to use those MPAA ratings as a guideline for obscenity."

• Lake County Library System selection policy: "selection decisions will not be limited by the possibility that materials may be accessible to children."

• Library Services Director Wendy Breeden: "Anytime a parent takes a child out, they are responsible for their children until they reach their age of majority. We respect that right, and we encourage parents to exercise it."

• Karen Howard, chairwoman of the library advisory board: "If parents are not going to be happy with the materials at the library, they should take the bull by the horns. Go with your child."

[Here's one really good way to respond to people who demand this kind of action: If you won't accept responsibility for raising your own child, why should I? But if I am really going to have to raise your child? -- then I'm going to raise him or her my way; not yours. --MN]

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

By the government of Venezuela. On 27 Jul Reporters Sans Frontieres reported that RCT continues to face challenges from the Chavez administration, this time under the Radio and TV Social Responsibility Law of 2004. The broadcaster, now called RCTV Internacional, had resumed broadcasting on 16 Jul via cable and satellite. On this day, Mario Seijas, the president of the Venezuelan Chamber of Subscription Television, announced that RCTV Internacional had five days to register as a national broadcaster under a provision of the National Commission for Telecommunications (Conatel) that was introduced by the Radio and TV Social Responsibility Law of 2004. The provision requires, in theory, that any broadcaster operating in Venezuela be formally registered as a "national broadcasting producer". Government officials have said that if RCTV Internacional does not comply, its programming will cease to be available by cable on 1 Aug.

RCTV Internacional responded with a statement disputing that it has to register as a national broadcaster. Legally, it said, RCTV Internacional is "an international TV station producing programmes to be broadcast worldwide, just like Telesur, Warner, HBO, Sony, History Channel, Sunchannel, E ! Entertainment Television and A&E Mundo." These stations are all available by cable in Venezuela.

RSF issued a statement asking some rather pointed questions and containing damning accusations:

Assuming RCTV does have to register as a 'national broadcast producer,' why did the Venezuelan authorities wait 10 days to notify the station of this, leaving it just five days to complete the formalities. Why was this question not raised immediately? Finally, and above all, why did this issue emerge at the very moment that RCTV was returning to the screen via cable and satellite?

The other international cable stations have never had to submit to this requirement. The government’s intentions are all too obvious. This is another attempt at censorship. The government always denied that it was closing down RCTV when it terminated its terrestrial broadcasting. But what else will it have done if it now makes RCTV unavailable by cable?

Aside from this, RCT Internacional was also seeking relief from the cadenas/speech compulsion in the way that Telesur is exempt from them. This public TV station, funded principally by the Venezuelan government and which broadcasts terrestrially and by cable, has been exempted from the cadenas system for its cable transmissions. The day after RCTV resumed cable and satellite broadcasting, the Venezuelan authorities said the law would be amended in order to extend the compelled speech system to privately-owned cable and satellite broadcasters as well as terrestrial broadcasters. Complicating the issue is that RCT Internacional is now sailing under a flag of convenience; RCTV’s headquarters are now located in the United States, so that it is now registered as a foreign country.

On 02 Aug, RSF reported that RCT Internacional would continue to broadcast by cable beyond the government's deadline due to an 11th hour reprieve in the form of a decision by the supreme court. The court said that it was prepared to hear a petition from the Venezuelan Chamber of Subscription Television (Cavetesu) about the status of cable and satellite TV stations. Señor Seíjas pointed out on 28 Jul that none of the 40 pay-TV channels had any registered status, national or international. The Cavetesu then petitioned the supreme court’s constitutional section for clear rules on the rights and duties of national and international cable and satellite broadcasters in Venezuela. Señor Seíjas had previously asked the government to hold urgent negotiations with the stations, including RCTV Internacional, but never recieved any response.

By Valerie Plame. On this day Judge Barbara S. Jones of Federal District Court in Manhattan, ruled that even though the dates of Ms. Plame's employment at the C.I.A. are now public knowledge, the agency has not declassified the information and has sound intelligence-based reasons for refusing to allow the information to be published in Ms. Plame's book. Judge Jones acknowledged that the agency: "does not contest that the information is, in fact, in the public domain," and that "the public may draw whatever conclusions it might from the fact that the information at issue was sent on C.I.A. letterhead by the chief of retirement and insurance services", but she said a classified court filing from Stephen R. Kappes, the deputy director of the C.I.A., which lawyers for Ms. Wilson and her publisher were not allowed to see, contained a reasonable explanation for the agency's position. Judge Jones did not reveal it, saying only that Mr. Kappes has persuaded her of "the harm to national security which reasonably could be expected if the C.I.A. were to acknowledge the veracity of the information at issue." Judge Jones wrote of Mr. Kappes's secret statement: "His explanation is reasonable, and the court sees no reason to disturb his judgment." An Associated Press article about the ruling that was posted at the First Amendment Center on 06 Aug explained the situation thusly:

The judge, in a decision dated Aug. 1 and entered into the public record Aug. 3, wrote that the government cannot be forced to divulge information that has never been officially released from classified status. "Sound policy compels this distinction," she wrote. "When a disclosure is unofficial, the world at large is left to surmise whether the information is accurate. Leaving the public to guess carries some degree of protection to confidentiality."

Jones said the CIA "confirms its commitment to secrecy when it does not officially disclose or acknowledge public information." That commitment, she ruled, "serves not only to protect former and existing intelligence sources and methods, but also serves to maintain the confidence of would-be recruits and co-operators." In the world of international diplomacy, she added, official confirmation of public information can have a negative effect on U.S. relations with foreign countries.

Adam Rothberg, a spokesman for publisher, Simon & Schuster, said that aspect of the ruling was particularly frustrating, and is quoted: "Trying to argue a case in which the government was able to submit a supersecret affidavit which we were not able to review was like playing an opponent who has 53 cards in his deck," he said. [The entire decision] "runs counter to the First Amendment, sets a dangerous precedent and creates an unreasonable standard by which the government can disappear public information and rewrite history."

The C.I.A. seems to have had no significant objections beyond the dispute over Ms. Plame's employment dates. In a letter from Dec 2006, which was quoted in the decision, the agency's publication review board said the manuscript was "replete with statements" that "become classified when they are linked with a specific time frame."

[Yeah, and which statements can still be linked with a specific time frame since the information is public knowledge even if it isn't in the book. Having held security clearances I can understand how a certain level of paranoia is necessary and even a good thing, but I can't help but feel that this is a case of going beyond reasonable paranoia and into outright stupidity. --MN]

By The District of Columbia. See the anti-Bush sentiment suppression timeline.

By Robert Parry. See the entry on the Bush censorship page.

By Devaughndre Broussard, allegedly. On this day, Chauncey Bailey, editor of the Oakland Post and a former reporter for The Oakland Tribune, was murdered outside the court house in Oakland, California, at approximately 07:30. Police had conducted a series of pre-dawn raids on this day, including one on a well-known bakery that was linked to a black Muslim group which had been the subject of stories written by Bailey. Oakland Deputy Police Chief Howard Jordan said the raid on Your Black Muslim Bakery and three other locations were part of a yearlong investigation into several violent crimes, including "murder, robbery and kidnapping." KCBS-AM reported that Mr. Bailey had been researching a new investigative piece about the bakery; apparently about its finances. Deputy Chief Jordan would not say at the time whether the raids were related to the murder.

On 06 Aug, the police announced that Devaughndre Broussard, a 19-year-old handyman for the Black Muslim group, would be charged with the murder. Mr. Broussard was one of seven people arrested in the 03 Aug raids on Your Black Muslim Bakery and nearby houses and confessed to the fatal shooting. The bakery organization was founded nearly 40 years ago with a mission to empower Oakland's poor, but since 2005, at least, it had seemingly turned toward violent crime in the name of extremism.

[There isn't enough information in the reports on the murder, really, to tie this into Bailey's coverage of the group. However, I would surmise that Broussard probably blamed Bailey for the raid and the arrests and decided to get revenge. --MN]

By U.S. District Judge Ronald Whyte. See the entry on the Child Porn/Harmful to Minors page.

By the government of China. In the first matter, International Campaign for Tibet and the U.S. government-supported Radio Free Asia reported that police and army reinforcements were sent to the town of Lithang in western Sichuan province following an incident on 01 Aug, at an annual horse festival which attracts thousands of visitors. The reports said Runggye Adak, a local man, was detained after climbing onto a stage for Chinese officials, grabbing a microphone, and asking the crowd if they wanted the Dalai Lama to return, at which hundreds responded with a roaring yes. It was also reported that a crowd later gathered at the detention center to appeal for his release, but officers fired warning shots to disperse it. RFA said approximately two hundred Tibetans were detained following the protest, but did not indicate whether they were still in custody.

In the second matter, China moved to tighten control over Tibetan Buddhism by asserting the government's sole right to recognize Buddhist reincarnations of the lamas that form the backbone of that religion's clergy. According to the official Xinhua News Agency said, which cited the State Administration for Religious Affairs, all future incarnations of living Buddhas related to Tibetan Buddhism will have to get government approval.

by K.L. Going. The coming-of-age novel chronicles the friendship between an angst-ridden teen named Troy, and a homeless punk-rocker named Curt. The pair first cross paths as Troy contemplates throwing himself from a subway platform in a suicide attempt. The book broaches mature subjects, such as drug and alcohol use, adolescent sexual fantasies, and ditching school, and has been compared to J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. It was on a list of suggested summer reading compiled by teachers at Alsip's Prairie Junior High, Oak Lawn, Illinois. When parent Karen Lukes began to read the book alongside her son, she was stunned to discover that it was laced with profanity and other mature content. She wants Alsip, Hazelgreen and Oak Lawn School District 126 administrators to remove the book from the shelves. "I want it pulled. It's vulgar, and it's a total contradiction. The kids can't go around and talk like this ... What kind of message does it send?" Two other parents have also complained about it.

District 126 Superintendent Robert Berger stands by the selection as one of many books offered to students. All seventh- and eighth-graders at Prairie Junior High are required to read at least one book before school begins, preferably, but not necessarily, from the recommended summer reading list.

[Ms. Lukes acknowledged that it's up to parents to decide what's best for their children, but she is also quoted: "No parent can go and read all six books to preview them." In point of fact, reading six novels aimed at the young-adult audience is not at all onerous, and would be accomplished quite easily by an parent who engages in actual parenting instead of relying on government to raise their children for them. For that matter, a parent who wishes to shield their children from vulgarities doesn't even have to read the whole book, they can just skim through it quickly to see if it contains any material that offends them and forbid their child to read it, since the censorial don't pay any attention to context anyway. --MN]

By an AT&T Inc subcontractor. Song lyrics criticizing President Bush, performed by Pearl Jam, were censored from a webcast. AT&T, through its Blue Room entertainment site, had offered a webcast of the band's headlining performance Lollapalooza in Chicago; the event was shown with a time delay to allow the bleeping out of excessive profanity or nudity. Monitors hired by AT&T through a vendor, however, went further and cut two lines from a song to the tune of Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall. One line was "George Bush, leave this world alone", which was cut out twice, and the other line was "George Bush find yourself another home".

On 13 Aug, it was reported that AT&T spokesman Michael Coe said how the silencing was done in error, and that the company was working with the vendor to avoid future misunderstandings. He also said AT&T was working to secure the rights to post the entire song on the Blue Room site. Blue Room offers live concerts, sports interviews, video-game advice, and other entertainment content that requires a high-speed Internet connection. Viewing the content is free, although San Antonio-based AT&T uses it to promote its DSL broadband services.

By The United States military. In a piece titled HBO Airs A-Bomb Footage Kept From Media for Decades, which was reprinted at TurthOut.org on 07 Aug, Greg Mitchell, of Editor and Publisher briefly examines the history of censorship of the documentary filming, both private sector and military, of the destruction and death in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He wrote in part:

In the weeks following the atomic attacks on Japan almost 60 years ago, and then for decades afterward, the United States engaged in airtight suppression of all film shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the bombings. This included footage shot by U.S. military crews and Japanese newsreel teams. In addition, for many years all but a handful of newspaper photographs were seized or prohibited.

The public did not see any of the newsreel footage for 25 years, and the U.S. military film rem ained hidden for nearly four decades. Suppressing film footage shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was quite significant, as this country rushed into the nuclear age with its citizens having neither a true understanding of the effects of the bomb on human beings, nor why the atomic attacks drew condemnation around the world.

[...]

Because the footage shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was hidden for so long, the atomic bombings quickly sank, unconfronted and unresolved, into the deeper recesses of American awareness, as a costly nuclear arms race, and nuclear proliferation, accelerated.

[This is an incredible chronicle of un-democratic perfidy and the consequences of censorship. Absolutely a must read. --MN]

By U.S. Magistrate Judge James C. Francis IV. See the anti-Bush sentiment suppression timeline.

By David Attenborough. An article posted at mediawatchwatch.org.uk on this day reported that Mr. Attenborough's documentary series had been expurgated by evangelical Christian broadcaster EO. The company had purchased exclusive rights to show the series in Holland.

[Personally, I have no doubt that this censorship will be seen as helping to ensure that the Dutch public will be vulnerable to christo-fanatic, anti-evolutionary propaganda. I don't think it will serve that end to any great degree, but it does not bode well that American-based anti-intellectualism has been exported to Europe. --MN]

By Shirley Phelps-Roper. Ms. Roper is facing multiple charges stemming from an incident in which her ten-year-old son was jumping up and down on a flag of the United States:

• flag desecration,
• negligent child abuse,
• contributing to the delinquency of a minor,
• disturbing the peace.

That incident occurred during a anti-homosexuality protest in June, at a funeral for a serviceman killed in Iraq. It was reported on this day that Ms. Roper is to challenge the State of Nebraska flag desecration on Free Speech grounds. The Nebraska flag law defines flag mutilation as when a "person intentionally casts contempt or ridicule upon a flag by mutilating, defacing, defiling, burning, or trampling upon such flag", and Ms. Roper contents that it is constitutionally infirm. It is almost certain to be found so under two rulings: in 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court declared a Texas flag-desecration law was unconstitutional in Texas v. Johnson, and in 1990, in United States v. Eichman, the court struck down a similar federal flag-protection law.

[How much more schizophrenically ironic can the United States become when a fucking, ultra-right-wing nut, ultra-conservative, religious fanatic shit-head ends up being the one defending the Bill of Rights? Mind you, I have no doubts at all that Roper is not defending civil liberties for everybody; I am absolutely certain in my own mind that this is a dog-in-the-manger effort to protect only her rights for herself and the Westboro Baptist Church viewpoints. I do not for a second believe that she understands how this action will defend the civil liberties for everyone, including those homosexuals that have them foaming at the brain. See The Anti-Phelps Affair page. --MN]

By Shawn Byrne, of West Rutland, Vermont. See the entry on the Vanity Licence Plates page.

By Gene Policinski, First Amendment Center vice president/executive director. In his piece, titled We're strangling high school free speech, press, published at the First Amendment Center web site on this day, he looks at the ongoing reductions of free speech and free press rights of unfranchised young adults. He writes that civil rights for students have not really made any progress in twenty years, and what rights they do have appear now to be seriously threatened. The principal point of his piece is as follows:

We can all agree that realistic threats of violence in school merit realistic responses by authorities. And I have yet to find even strident First Amendment advocates who disagree that student journalists need education, training and adult advice.

But what are we teaching students -- our future fellow citizens -- about the value of a free press when a well-written, mild-mannered essay is reason for killing off a student publication and removing the adviser? What are we telling students about the value of free speech when the good ones are reprimanded, suspended, expelled or even face criminal charges for musings that likely would have sent a prior generation to after-school detention, at most?

When we block students from expressing themselves in school, we likely don't shut off the speech. We drive it underground or into cyberspace.

For more information on the dispowerment and disfranchisement of students, see these articles at the Student Press Law Center and First Amendment Center; some of these cases have happened since the Bong Hits 4 Jesus debacle, and some of them are overreactions to post-Columbine hysteria:

Court says student's violent buddy icon not protected expression, 18 Jul; a student is punished for doing something sophomoric and crass, but hardly criminal. It will also be necessary to see this analysis at FAC for more background on this affair: 2nd Circuit: School can punish student for off-campus Web activity.

Adviser Bosley settles case with Ocean County College, 23 Jul; Ocean County College had to pay out 90,000 for censoring the student paper.

Blogging student leader sues Connecticut school district, 24 Jul; punished for an intemperate exercise of what is clearly protected speech.

District court says high school editors' lawsuit will go to trial, 24 Jul; the ongoing Kodak censorship affair at Everett High School; the school must answer in court.

10th Circuit rules in Kansas State adviser dismissal case, 27 Jul; a failure to protect the rights of those currently in school, because the plaintiffs no longer are.

Court rules against student who wrote violent dream story, 03 Aug; punished for writing about a dream with violent imagery; an expansion of Morse v: Frederick down the slipper slope. Also see 11th Circuit backs teen's suspension for penning violent story.

Delaware student sues school over suspension for Web postings, 03 Aug; punished for writing something sophomoric, crass, and possibly disgusting; see Student disciplined for online postings sues Univ. of Del. for more background.

Court backs Tenn. high school that kicked students off football team , 08 Aug; this one should have been tried under the right to petition one's government for a redress of a grievance rather than free speech rights, but the students probably would have still gotten screwed.

Judge OKs Mo. school's ban on clothes with Confederate flag, 13 Aug; in which an entire student body is penalized for the clearly criminal actions of a small handful of students.

And for three instances of politically correctness run totally amok, see:

Girl doodles her way into 3-day suspension: in a case from 2002, an 11-year-old girl was suspended for drawing two teachers with arrows through their heads, on the grounds that the stick figures were a true threat rather than just doodling.

5th Circuit: Judge was right to toss student's lawsuit: from Dec 2004, in which the 5th Circuit ruled that a high school principal had not violated the rights of a student in recommending he be expelled for drawing a picture of the school soaked in gasoline and surrounded by armed students.

Boys' violent drawings lead to felony charges: when a 9- and a 10-year-old pupil in Ocala, Florida, made pencil-and-crayon stick-figure drawings showing a 10-year-old classmate being stabbed and hanged, they were arrested and removed from the school in handcuffs.

By law-abiding, British protesters. See my exploration of this incident and a movement centering around an abuse of anti-terrorism laws to suppress ecological activism, protest, and dissenting opinion in Great Britain.

By the U.S. federal Bureau of Prisons. The report, in the 13 Aug issue of Newsweek (published the week before), tells about a law suit filed by Moshe Milstein and two fellow inmates at the federal prison in Otisville, New York. Officials at the prison recently removed hundreds of books from the chapel library; among them, according to court documents, works by the 12th-century rabbi and physician Maimonides. as well as the Zohar, the ancient text upon which the mystical practice of Kabbalah was founded. The books were removed to comply with new rules set earlier this year to reduce the risk that prisoners will find hateful or radicalizing materials in chapel libraries. The BOP developed lists of one hundred fifty approved books per religion for twenty religions, including Bahai, Mormonism, and Jehovah Witnesses. Chaplains in all of the bureau's one hundred fourteen prisons are in the midst of removing any book not on one of the BOP's lists.

Together with a Christian and a Muslim, Jewish Mr. Milstein sued Otisville prison officials, saying the removal of the religious books violates their civil rights and presents insurmountable obstacles to practicing and studying their faiths. the case was withdrawn on July 27, however, while the inmates exhaust the grievance process within the prison system. In the interim, their attorneys stand ready to refile if the inmates' demands are not met. Religious groups have also taken up the inmates' cause, while allowing that the goal of preventing inmates from reading incendiary material may be exemplary, they say, the implementation is not. Mark L. Early, president of Prison Fellowship Ministries, wrote in a letter to the BOP's chaplain: "The new policy will force chaplains to throw out many excellent books ... leaving only a possibility of 150 books available to the inmates." Traci Billingsley, a BOP spokeswoman says that the lists are not capped and prisoners may submit titles for vetting at any time. This still creates a situation, however, in which they are required to petition the government for permission to read disselected books, and in which the government can say 'no'.

[Addendum (29 Aug 2007:) On 22 Aug, an article by Associated Press reported that the plaintiffs had filed a lawsuit anew in U.S. District Court, and are asking that the suit be given class action status so it can go nationwide and benefit thousands of others inmates. This article also reported that the Muslim portion of the chapel library had been reduced to the Quran and two other titles after the removal of prayer books, prayer guides, and the Hadith, which is the most important source for Muslim practice and faith after the Quran. According to the documents, among the books banned at their prison were When Bad Things Happen to Good People by Rabbi Harold S. Kushner, and The Purpose-Driven Life by the Rev. Rick Warren. --MN]

By Kevin Engler. See the anti-Bush sentiment suppression timeline.

By Paul Wolfowitz. See the entry on the Bush censorship page.

By the government of Canada. On 23 Feb 2007, the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously ruled that the secret-hearing security-certificate procedure was unconstitutional. This process is so invested in secrecy, lack of procedural safeguards, and the inability of the defendant to know the case against him, that the process is fundamentally flawed and unfair. On this day, Matthew Behrens, of rabble.ca, a Canadian, independent media web site, reported on how the Harper government had not only not stopped violating human rights, but planned to refine trials-in-secrecy laws so it can continue to do so. While Mr. Behrens allowed that the ruling had numerous flaws, he sated: "However, the court unequivocally found that the process for determining a certificate's "reasonableness," the heart of the procedure, was completely incompatible with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms." He then wrote about the Harper government's reaction to the ruling:

So far, the minority Harper government has treated the Supreme Court's decision as a minor annoyance — much as the Bush administration brushes off pro-Guantanamo-Bay detainee court decisions in the United States — and "Public Safety" Minister Stockwell Day has promised new secret trial legislation for this fall. This was not unexpected. Indeed, in a July 2007 response to the standing committee on public safety, the government completely dismissed the Supreme Court finding that security certificates violate Charter rights, stating only that, from its point of view, the Supreme Court "held that the government could do more to protect the rights of the individual during the process."

Perhaps of more concern is the fact that rather than joining the wide-ranging grassroots campaign to abolish secret hearings, indefinite detention, draconian control orders, and deportation to torture, some individuals and groups, including the Federal Court of Canada, are buying into the tired old "national security" myths and distortions and seeing if they can manufacture a "balanced solution" in a situation where no solution short of abolition is suitable to meet the best interests of justice.

Two principles of free and democratic societies that were cited in the decision are:

In a constitutional democracy, governments must act accountably and in conformity with the Constitution and the rights and liberties it guarantees. ... Security concerns cannot be used to excuse procedures that do not conform to fundamental justice.
--Supreme Court of Canada Chief Justice McLachlin, Charkaoui v. Canada, 23 Feb 2007

By the Asheville Police Department, North Carolina. See the anti-Bush sentiment suppression timeline.

By the Bush administration. See the anti-Bush sentiment suppression timeline.

By the U.S. military command structure. On this day a piece by Noah Shactman, of Wired was reprinted at TruthOut.org. In it, Mr. Shactman reveals how breaches of security are promulgated not by servicemen in the field so much as by the command structure which says that web journals pose a threat to national security. Mr. Shactman wrote in part:

For years, the military has been warning that soldiers' blogs could pose a security threat by leaking sensitive wartime information. But a series of online audits, conducted by the Army, suggests that official Defense Department websites post material far more potentially harmful than anything found on a individual's blog.

The audits, performed by the Army Web Risk Assessment Cell between January 2006 and January 2007, found at least 1,813 violations of operational security policy on 878 official military websites. In contrast, the 10-man, Manassas, Virginia, unit discovered 28 breaches, at most, on 594 individual blogs during the same period.

The results of the audit were obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation under a Freedom of Information Act law suit. EFF staff attorney Marcia Hofmann commented about the situation: "It's clear that official Army websites are the real security problem, not blogs. Bloggers, on the whole, have been very careful and conscientious. It's a pretty major disparity."

The army command, however, is not necessarily pleased with this turn of events. An e-mail from the office of the Army Chief Information Officer, also obtained in EFF's lawsuit, reads in part: "My suspicion ... is that the AWRAC's attention is being diverted by the new mission of reviewing all the Army blogs. In the past they did a good job of detecting and correcting violations, but that is currently not the case." This plaint might very well seem to have a point, however military intelligence is largely a case of accumulating and piecing together minutiae so as to form a larger picture; much like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. AWRAC found:

• photos showing bomb damage to a Humvee (a bomb damage assessment that could be used to confirm or adjust the placement of roadside booby traps); %a description of a mountain near a base in Afghanistan (helping to reveal the location of troops);
• a video about "morale concerning incoming mortar" (providing intelligence useful for psychological warfare);
• a presentation, classified secret, on the official, unclassified Army Knowledge Online network (a very clear and present violation of intelligence security);
• a map of an Army training center in Texas on another .mil site (useful for planning a raid for materiel or a bombing attack);
• a "colonel's wife's maiden name" was caught on a third (which could be used to support the cover of an infiltrating terrorist).

[Considering this, command structure complaints about the audit results are almost certainly sour grapes by brasshats who are being held up to the same standard they have established for the lower ranks. Especially given that violations are perpetrated by official websites at a rate of two to one, but by servicemen journalers at a rate of only 1.3 in one hundred. My assessments of the breaches mentioned above stem from my own time in the military and intelligence briefings I've attended as part of my training. --MN]

By Dave Zirin. A journalist with the Star Telegram, he has been corresponding for some time with death row inmate Kenneth Foster, who was slated for execution by the State of Texas on 30 Aug 2007. He and Mr. Foster began to exchange letters on sports and politics after Mr. Foster read Mr. Zirin's book Welcome to the Terrordome. Mr. Zirin thought that sending Mr. Foster a copy of What's My Name Fool?, his first book, would be a good follow up, but the Texas Department of Corrections begged to differ. Instead of the book, Mr. Foster got a form, issued on 09 Aug, titled "Texas Dept of Criminal Justice, Publication review/denial notification", advising him that What's My Name Fool? was banned from death row on the grounds that: "It contains material that a reasonable person would construe as written solely for the purpose of communicating information designed to achieve the breakdown of prisons through offender disruption such as strikes or riots." It cited two samples of material found questionable:

• a passage on page 44 quoted from Jackie Robinson, who broke the "colour barrier" in pro-baseball by being the first negro player:

  "I felt tortured and I tried to just play ball and ignore the insults. But it was really getting to me. ... For one wild and rage-crazed moment I thought, 'To hell with Mr. Rickey's "noble experiment." ... To hell with the image of the patient black freak I was supposed to create.' I could throw down my bat, stride over to that Phillies dugout, grab one of those white sons of [expletive] and smash his teeth in with my despised black fist. Then I could walk away from it all."

• the second passage was on page 55, concerning Jack Johnson's boxing defeat of Jim Jeffries, known as the "Great White Hope":

  "Johnson was faster, stronger and smarter than Jeffries. He knocked Jeffries out with ease. After Johnson's victory, there were race riots around the country -- in Illinois, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Texas and Washington, D.C. Most of the riots consisted of white lynch mobs attacking Blacks, and Blacks fighting back. This reaction to a boxing match was one of the most widespread racial uprisings in the U.S. until the 1968 assassination of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr."

Mr. Zirin, in reaction to this action, wrote in part:

Let's forget about the fact that there is something bizarre -- almost comical -- about Texas prison authorities believing that a sports history could lead to "the breakdown of prisons through offender disruption such as strikes or riots." Let's forget that they are denying a man reading material in his last hours.

There is something repugnant about the fact that they think a book -- any book -- would be the source of resistance, rather than the reality that 159 people have been executed since Gov. Rick Perry took office in 2001, or the fact that the people on Death Row have no civil rights, no access to radio, television or even arts and crafts.

[...]

There was a time in Texas when it was illegal to teach slaves to read. The fear was that ideas could turn anger often directed inward into action against those with their boots on black necks. It is perhaps the most fitting possible tribute to Jackie Robinson and Jack Johnson that their stories still strike fear into the hearts of those wearing the boots.

By U.S. District Judge Saundra Armstrong. See the entry on the Bush censorship page.

By South Africa. Freedom of Expression Director Jane Duncan announced on this day, as the World Library and Information Congress in Durban, that proposed amendments to South Africa's Film and Publications Act of 1996 could have severe consequences for librarians, writers, artists, academics, and publishers. The bill will require the submission for prior review, for classification, a publication which containing visual presentations or descriptions of sexual conduct, propaganda for war, and incitement to violence or hate speech, by any person who intends to distribute the material. Ms. Duncan said that this means that librarians will not be able to control their acquisitions policy when it comes to controversial material. She also suggested that the government was responding to pressure from the anti-terrorism drive of the United States to fast-track the Act's implementation, despite the lack of mechanisms to prevent abuse.

The Promotion of Access to Information Act is restrictive in that it contains a blanket exemption of cabinet records, and overly broad grounds for the refusal of access to records. Also, the government dismissed the idea of setting up a dedicated enforcement mechanism for the Act in the form of information courts and an open democracy commission; Ms. Duncan commented on this lapse: "This means that if you want to enforce your right of access to information, you have to go to court, a daunting and exceedingly expensive exercise."

By Brattleboro, Vermont. A month after passing a temporary ban, the Brattleboro Selectboard rejected a proposed ordinance on this day that would have made the ban permanent. When the emergency ordinance lapses in September, public nudity in this town will be legal once again. Dora Bouboulis, Selectboard member, said that it wasn't up to the town to restrict the right of people to be nude in public. The permanent ordinance, rejected in a 3-2 vote, would have prohibited public nudity in downtown Brattleboro and along the Routes 5 and 9 corridors.

[I would have to say, off hand, that this striking down was done for the right reasons. Ms. Bouboulis is quoted as saying, "We in this country are going down a slippery slope these days", and this incident does seem to have overtones of ultra-conservatism; a petition with 967 signatures in support of a ban was presented by Michael Gauthier, who is quoted: "What is the point, other than shock and awe, that the nudists are trying to make?" Against that, however, Ms. Bouboulis, said that a national newspaper had recently published an article about the emergency ordinance under the headline "Tolerant town gets intolerant", so the striking down might have merely been to avoid embarrassment. As for what "point" the nudist might be trying to make, they are not required to be making any point through their self-expression. --MN]

By Payne Junior High School administrators and Chandler school district officials. In a display of utter, blinding stupidity, a thirteen-year-old student was suspended for making a sketch of a laser pistol. The parents of the young man said the drawing did not show blood, bullets, injuries, or target any human, but school administrators thought the sketch constituted a true threat and on 20 Aug levied a suspension; originally for five days, but later reduced to three. Chandler district spokesman Terry Locke said the sketch was "absolutely considered a threat," and threatening words or pictures are punishable. That determination seems to have been made unilaterally and well outside the pale of qualified immunity, however, as the school did not contact the police, it did not provide counseling, and it did not have the young man evaluated to determine if he intended the drawing as a threat.

Another aspect of the mind-boggling stupidity involved in this inicident is that when the student's father, Ben Mosteller, went to the school to discuss the matter, administrators equated this mere drawing -- of a weapon that is impossible to produce at current levels of physics and technology -- with the 1999 mass murder at Columbine High School.

By To Catch a Predator and NBC. The series has become a target itself for criticism by:

• 20/20,
• Esquire,
• the online magazine Radar,
• former producer Marsha Bartel,
• a Georgia judge,
• a local news reporter, and
• relatives of two of the show's victims.

A breach of contract lawsuit was filed against the series in May of this year by Ms. Bartel, who argues that NBC ignored allegations that minors had been used by the group Perverted Justice for its online sting operations; thereby: "committing the exact crime it claims it wishes to prevent, i.e., minors being exposed to pornography." When her complaints were ignored, she advised the network that she would not serve as the segment's producer; and she was fired within three months, after more than 20 years at NBC. Her lawsuit notes NBC's explanation was a mass layoff, although her contract was through 2009. Her suit calls the explanation "a ruse to sort out people to terminate."

Another lawsuit against was filed against NBC over the death of Louis Conradt, a former District Attorney in Texas. He had resisted efforts to entrap him at the house used by the show and Perverted Justice, so a SWAT team was sent to his home to arrest him. He shot himself dead when they showed up there. His sister is now suing NBC for 105 million USD. According to the web site Radar, A third lawsuit was filed by Robert White Sr., the father of Robert Gerald White, who was arrested in one of Dateline's earlier investigations. In Jul, Mr. White Sr. asked a judge to issue a warrant for the arrest of Xavier Von Erck, the founder of the group of online decoys. His argument is that they enticed his son into committing a felony, and by doing so committed solicitation, a practice which is illegal in Georgia. According to the Radar site, the judge issued an order agreeing that there was "probable cause" to believe enticement had occurred -- but then refused to issue a warrant for Von Erck's arrest, on the grounds that because there wasn't an actual minor behind the decoy, no actual crime could have been committed. Others, however, refute the judge's contention by pointing out that Georgia law clearly states: "it is no defense to a prosecution for criminal solicitation that the person solicited could not be guilty of the crime solicited." The Radar site also reported that on August 10, a judge in Oglethorpe County, Georgia, issued a previously unreported order finding that "there is probable cause to believe that Xavier Von Erck solicited ... child molestation, statutory rape, or attempted child molestation or attempted statutory rape."

[The last factor in this sorry debacle and corruption of the First Amendment by whorish media sluts that admit of no limits reasonable as to time, place, or manner, is this: Ms. Bartel's lawsuit also objects to NBC purchasing the surveillance systems used by the police, and notes that the network even pays or "indirectly reimburses" law enforcement officials for the stings, and this blurs the lines between television and law enforcement. --MN]

By Tom Wood. This sixteen year-old Melbourne resident managed to circumvent the Australian Federal Government's internet pornography filter and subsequently described it as "completely useless". During the month of Aug, Prime Minister John Howard announced that the filter would be made available free to every family; at a cost to taxpayers of eighty-four million dollars. Mr. Wood says he was able to completely override the filter in half an hour. The source article for this entry quoted Mr. Wood as saying:

• "I downloaded it on Tuesday to see how good it was, because for $84 million I would have expected a pretty unbreakable filter.

  "Tried a few things, it took about half an hour and [the filter] was completely useless."

• "If you ask most people in IT, the problem's not the filter, I'm sure they did it with the right intentions, it's just that they've spent such a great amount of money on it when they could've probably done something as effective for a few million dollars.

  "But $84 million is just outrageous, I think."

• "Filtering pornography is going to play a part but the main things that need to be done are collaboration with kids, because the problems that we have are directly affecting kids, not adults, and unless you speak to them quite a lot you're not going to do anything with any effect.

  "What really needs to happen is a lot of research done with kids and then education, compulsory in all levels of schooling, and awareness-raising for adults so we can get a more holistic approach and it'll be a lot more effective all over."

By Tufts University. administration announced Monday it had overturned a decision banning a student journal from running unsigned editorials. However, the university let stand the finding that two articles in The Primary Source, a conservative journal on campus, violated the school's policy against harassment. That ruling, in May of this year, was by the school's Committee on Student Life, which is composed of faculty and students. The journal appealed the ruling to Dean of Undergraduate Education James Glaser. He wrote in his decision: "Imposing such a provision on one publication in the context of a judicial decision can only be construed as punishment of unpopular speech." But he specifically noted: "I leave untouched the remainder of the committee's opinion."

Matthew Schuster, Primary Source editor in chief, said reversing the byline requirement was "a small step in the right direction", but the decision ignored "the most serious and troubling part of the decision." He is quoted: "The dangerous precedent of labeling political speech as harassment still stands. [The precedent] opens the floodgates for the administration and other students to just put us up on trial at Tufts."

However, in an e-mail to the Student Press Law Center, spokeswoman Kim Thurler said the decision means "the CSL decision no longer has any associated consequence." The e-mail is further quoted: "In effect, the members of the CSL simply expressed their own opinion regarding the offensive behavior in question. Their opinion does not constitute an official position by the university."

President Lawrence Bacow also said, in a separate statement, that in the future the private school will behave as though it were bound by the First Amendment. President Bacow said the committee was "ill-advised" to hear the case, and is quoted: "Universities are places where people should have the right to freely express opinions, no matter how offensive, stupid, wrong headed, ill-considered, or unpopular."

By the Watson Chapel School District, Arkansas. See my commentary on this issue.
(see 13 Sep 2007)

By Museum of the Armenian Genocide. In an article titled The Forgotten Holocaust, reprinted at CommonDreams.org, Robert Fisk writes about this museum that is dedicated to commemmorating the genocide of Armenians that the government of Turkey still denies ever happened. Mr. Fisk wrote in part, in a searing excoriation of Turkish denial and revisionism:

The story of the last century's first Holocaust - Winston Churchill used this very word about the Armenian genocide years before the Nazi murder of six million Jews - is well known, despite the refusal of modern-day Turkey to acknowledge the facts. Nor are the parallels with Nazi Germany's persecution of the Jews idle ones. Turkey's reign of terror against the Armenian people was an attempt to destroy the Armenian race. While the Turks spoke publicly of the need to "resettle" their Armenian population - as the Germans were to speak later of the Jews of Europe - the true intentions of Enver Pasha's Committee of Union and Progress in Constantinople were quite clear. On 15 September 1915, for example (and a carbon of this document exists) Talaat Pasha, the Turkish Interior minister, cabled an instruction to his prefect in Aleppo about what he should do with the tens of thousands of Armenians in his city. "You have already been informed that the government... has decided to destroy completely all the indicated persons living in Turkey... Their existence must be terminated, however tragic the measures taken may be, and no regard must be paid to either age or sex, or to any scruples of conscience." These words are almost identical to those used by Himmler to his SS killers in 1941.

Taner Akcam, a prominent - and extremely brave - Turkish scholar who has visited the Yerevan museum, has used original Ottoman Turkish documents to authenticate the act of genocide. Now under fierce attack for doing so from his own government, he discovered in Turkish archives that individual Turkish officers often wrote "doubles" of their mass death-sentence orders, telegrams sent at precisely the same time that asked their subordinates to ensure there was sufficient protection and food for the Armenians during their "resettlement". This weirdly parallels the bureaucracy of Nazi Germany, where officials were dispatching hundreds of thousands of Jews to the gas chambers while assuring International Red Cross officials in Geneva that they were being well cared for and well fed.

He also illustrated how effective censorship can be in covering up such bloody-handedness and consigning events to the dustbin of history:

There is debate in Yerevan today as to why the diaspora Armenians appear to care more about the genocide than the citizens of modern-day Armenia. Indeed, the Foreign minister of Armenia, Vardan Oskanian, actually told me that "days, weeks, even months go by" when he does not think of the genocide. One powerful argument put to me by an Armenian friend is that 70 years of Stalinism and official Soviet silence on the genocide deleted the historical memory in eastern Armenia - the present-day state of Armenia. Another argument suggests that the survivors of western Armenia - in what is now Turkey - lost their families and lands and still seek acknowledgement and maybe even restitution, while eastern Armenians did not lose their lands.

[For more on that last point, see the entry about journalists in China being punished due to the effectivenes of censorship of the Tiannenmen Square massacre. --MN]

By Scott Thill, of AlterNet.org. In a piece titled Pot Growers Are New Target in "War on Terror", Mr. Thill shows how the U.S. federal government has been increasing expanding the circle of whom may be condemned as a terrorist. The latest group to be equated with international terrorism is those who grow marijuana domestically.

[...] In fact, over the last few years, "terrorist" has become an epithet for all seasons. In 2003, Iraq occupation architect Richard Perle slapped investigative journalist Seymour Hersh with the term, saying, "Look, Sy Hersh is the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist, frankly." As if filing a story about the doomed occupation of a sovereign state in the pages of the New Yorker was the same thing as flying a 747 into the World Trade Center.

In 2004, Secretary of Education Rod Paige called the National Education Association, the country's largest teachers union, "a terrorist organization" because of what Paige defined as the "obstructionist scare tactics" used by its lobbyists. Because we all know it's every educator's dream to buck the systemby blowing themselves up in front of their students.

And just this month, the Bush administration decided to employ the term to legally target the entire Iranian Revolutionary Guard, a sovereign nation's standing army numbering in the hundreds of thousands. When you want a war that badly, you'll pretty much do or say anything to get it.

So how does the Bush administration get away with crying terrorist at every opportunity? Say hello to the Military Commissions Act. Thanks to this 2006 piece of legislation, terrorism has become the basis of American foreign and domestic policy. Yes, the term has become equivalent to everything from ideologically driven violence to petty theft, and can be used to incarcerate, exterminate or character assassinate anything in sight.

He also cited the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) "czar" John Walters as saying: "We have kind of a reefer blindness. These people are armed; they're dangerous. [They're] violent criminal terrorists." [... They] "wouldn't hesitate to help other terrorists get into the country with the aim of causing mass casualties." Mr. Thill reported that there were problems with these characterizations, however. Mr. Walters was speaking during a Redding press conference on the ONDCP's Operation Alesia, a cannabis-eradication program being coordinated by the Counterdrug Taskforce of the California National Guard, and the Shasta County Sheriff's Office. Mr. Walters declined to explain during the press conference what the specific goals are for the operation, nor did he offer up any names of terrorists or their ideological objectives. As a result, both legalization advocates and law enforcement authorities were left with another hazy strategy based on loose terminology, the only purpose of which appears to be the confiscation from Shasta County's public lands of as much marijuana as possible.

[Addendum (06 Oct 2007:) For more on how blindly-stupid prosecution of the so-called war on drugs is, and how the North American governments endlessly spouts the nonsensical unwarranted assumptions upon which it is based and around which it revolves, see Spinning A Failed War on Drugs, at CommonDreams.org. --MN]

By the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. A three-judge panel of the appeals court reversed a lower court ruling that denied relief from state enforcement to Bogart's Lounge, and sent the case back to the District Court in Detroit with instructions to issue a preliminary injunction. Located in the Detroit suburb of Inkster, Bogart's has been ticketed numerous times for violating a prohibition against fully nude dancing in places licensed to sell alcoholic drinks. The district court had rejected the request for a preliminary injunction on the grounds that the state could prohibit nude dancing in places where liquor is sold under the 21st Amendment; the appeals court said the U.S. Supreme Court had abandoned that rationale for upholding regulations that raise First Amendment concerns in those places. The Supreme Court's viewpoint was that while nudity itself is not expressive conduct, nude dancing is. The appeals court decision reads in part: "We do not doubt that it is within the state's police power to pass a nudity ban, to regulate places where liquor is sold, and to combat secondary effects that might be related to adult entertainment. But we are left to guess about the government interest at stake and how it is advanced by [the rules], not to mention which standard governs this case."

University of Michigan law professor Richard Friedman commented about the situation: "The state has a tough road ahead of them to try and defend this. It hasn't come up with an interest to justify these regulations -- that's the most fundamental thing. Ken Wozniak, a spokesman for the Michigan Liquor Control Commission, said the state would fight to keep the regulations. The state's legal arguement will be, among other things, that throwing out the rules would lead to increased secondary effects; criminal activity such as prostitution and drug-dealing. Timothy Murphy, representing Hamilton's Bogarts Inc., said there is no evidence of why the state adopted the regulations, and that the regulations criminalize mainstream entertainment such as showing plays or movies containing nudity in theaters and other venues that serve alcohol. He is quoted, "You can't watch "Carnal Knowledge" at the local country club. What's that got to do with what we're trying to prevent?" Mr. Murphy said his next move would be to file a motion to strike down the rules as being overboard.

By Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich. This new set of protections for student media at state colleges will take effect in January 2008. The bill of this law was introduced by State Senator Susan Garrett (D-Lake Forest) introduced the bill in early Feb 2007, with assistance from the ACLU, in response to the 2005 ruling by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Hosty v. Carter. The law:

• makes student reporters and editors responsible for all content decisions, including advertising;
• gives state schools immunity from being sued over material printed in campus media;
• protects media advisers from being "terminated, transferred, removed, otherwise disciplined, or retaliated against for refusing to suppress protected free expression rights of collegiate student journalists and of collegiate student editors."

Making all student publications at public colleges public forums effectively nullifies the Hosty ruling in Illinois, although the decision remains in force in Indiana and Wisconsin, the other two states in the 7th Circuit. Administrators may now punish student journalists only for material constituting "harassment, threats, or intimidation, unless constitutionally protected, or for speech that is not constitutionally protected, including obscenity or incitement." Six states currently offer full First Amendment protection to high school journalists in public schools: Arkansas, California, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas and Massachusetts. California also provides freedom for the college press at both public and private institutions.

[Addendum (06 Oct 2007:) For more on how blindly-stupid prosecution of the so-called war on drugs is, and how the North American governments endlessly spouts the nonsensical unwarranted assumptions upon which it is based and around which it revolves, see Spinning A Failed War on Drugs, at CommonDreams.org. --MN]

By U.S. District Judge Mark R. Kravitz. Avery Doninger, a student at Lewis Mills High School in Burlington, Connecticut, wrote a rude diatribe in her web journal against the school's principle in Apr. Despite her being a model student, and the fact that the utterance was made outside of school, she was punished for the entry. Lauren Doninger, her mother, filed a lawsuit against the school, claiming her daughter's free-speech rights had been compromised. On this day, Judge Kravitz issued his upheld the school administration's decision to punish the younger Ms. Doninger. On 04 Sep, the elder Ms. Doninger announced that they would appeal. She is quoted: "We will appeal. It is a tremendously dangerous precedent. She is a good kid who didn't threaten or cause a disruption. This is all about language, and it means that anything said or written outside of school can be censored." Jon L. Schoenhorn, their attorney, commented about the situation: "The school shouldn't be able to reach out into your public comments outside of school. It's the kind of rule you would expect in a police state, the idea that anything you say anywhere can be used against you no matter where you are."

[A sentiment with which I concur wholeheartedly. My call on this one is that it will either drag on until Doninger has graduated and the issue will be declared moot -- the most likely scenario -- or the punishment and Kravitz's decision will be upheld under the Bong Hits 4 Jesus decision. In either event, school officious [sic] will have another tool by which to censor criticism of them. One more point: Mr. Schoenhorn reportedly sais that the central issue is whether First Amendment rights should be left at the schoolhouse doors. I do not agree with that. I see this case as being more of a matter of students being forbidden to take their First Amendment rights once they are again outside the schoolhouse doors. --MN]

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

By the Florence Unified School District, Arizona. An eighth-grade student at Florence's Walker Butte School, Joshua Vardarkis, was suspended for three days on 24 Aug for drawing pictures of a gun. His mother, Stephanie Vardarkis said he had drawn the images on index cards, something like a cartoon, and which included a stick figure holding a gun. In one image, he included the name of the school resource officer. Rather than it being a threat, the character was meant to be calling the officer for backup. The young lad was doing this work in class, and his teacher told him to put the cards away. When he failed to do so, they were confiscated. Ms. Vardakas said her son should have received after-school detention for not following his teacher's instructions, rather than the three-day suspension he was given for being a supposedly homicidal maniac.

By SF Gate. The indy news outlet reported on this day that the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled againt Ronald Dible in his free speech law suit against the Chandler, Arizona, police department. Then Officer Dible and his wife, Megan, started a pay-for-view, web site in Sep 2000, with videos featuring the nude Mrs. Dible. The police department learned about the site only in Jan 2002 and the media reported on it. Several officers testified at Officer Dible's disciplinary hearing about fall out from the report:

• one officer said that when she went to a bar to break up a fight, a patron told her to take off her clothes.
• another said potential recruits had raised the subject with her,
• an assistant chief said he believed the department's ability to recruit female police officers would be hurt for years.

Ronald Dible was fired in Apr 2002, and his law suit was filed in 2003, claiming that the department had violated his right of free speech. On 05 Sep, the appeals court upheld a lower court ruling that police department had the right to fire him. The appeals court cited a 2004 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allowed the city of San Diego to fire a police officer who had made and sold videos of himself stripping out of a police uniform. The court had said that his activities had harmed the police department and were not constitutionally protected. In this case, Mr. Dible did not tell his customers that he was a police officer, however, the court said the harm caused by his conduct, once disclosed, far outweighed any legal protection it deserved. Judge Ferdinand Fernandez commented in the ruling, "His activities were simply vulgar and indecent. They did not contribute speech on a matter of public concern", and, "The public expects officers to behave with a high level of propriety, and, unsurprisingly, is outraged when they do not do so." Chief Judge Mary Schroeder joined him in his opinion: "The law and their own safety demands that they be given a degree of respect, and the sleazy activities of Ronald and Megan Dible could not help but undermine that respect." Judge William Canby, demurred, saying in a separate opinion that the Officer Dible's lies to investigators, when he originally denied being associated with the site, were the only valid grounds for his being fired. Judge Canby said that the court's rationale might be equally applied to an off-duty officer who angered some members of the public by marching in a gay pride parade, even though he might not be in uniform at the time.

By Ruth Rosen of TomDispatch.com. See the entry on the Bush censorship page.

By Linda McQuaig of The Toronto Star. Her piece, titled Invisible Afghan casualties, was reprinted at rabble.ca, a Canadian indy media site. In it, Ms. McQuaig illustrates the socio-political context in which both commercial and non-commercial Canadian press outlets are tacitly promoting the war and acting as a propaganda arm by not reporting unpleasant truths and by not asking the hard questions. She wrote, in part:

One way to prevent this (American) pro-war momentum from setting in here would be for us to demand that the casualties we inflict on Afghans also be treated with some attention and respect.

Instead, our government and media celebrate the number of "Taliban" we kill, without any understanding of who these individuals are and whether they are simply local villagers fighting-as Afghans have done throughout their history-to resist foreign armies. Whether we admit it or not, we are a part of a foreign army over there.

More surprising is the disrespectful way our government and media treat even Afghan civilian casualties.

There's been minimal coverage here of the repeated pleas from Afghans-including President Hamid Karzai-for an end to the U.S. and NATO bombings that have killed countless Afghan civilians. (And they are literally countless; we don't bother counting them.) As part of the NATO force over there, Canada is surely complicit in these war deaths.

Yet our media tend to make short shrift of them, even raising doubts about whether they really take place. Last week, the CBC reported that Afghan elders "alleged" that up to 18 civilians were killed by coalition troops in Helmand province.

The CBC quoted a NATO spokesperson who charged that the civilian casualties were being deliberately exaggerated by the Taliban for propaganda purposes.

But how do we know NATO isn't playing down the casualties for propaganda purposes? How does NATO even know who's being killed in its bombing raids?

By the German Federal Prosecutor. An article by Roger Keil and Ute Lehrer, titled Scientists find out: gentrification is bad for you, was published by the Canadian indy media site rabble.ca on this day. In it, they detail how the researchers and writers of a report on gentrification are being treated as de facto terrorists. They reported:

Gentrification is bad for you. How bad? Just ask a group of German researchers who find themselves accused of belonging to a 'terrorist organization,' largely because they published on the subject. Their work on gentrification (among other things) can allegedly be linked through textual analysis to the communiques of a so-called 'militant group' suspected of political extremism. In turn, three persons, who are charged with trying to set fire to three army vehicles outside of Berlin on 31 July 31, 2007, are suspected by the police to be members of that group. In this cycle of suspicions, the ends don't quite meet.

However, in the eyes of the German police writing texts is not the only crime committed. The researchers are also accused of having 'contacts,' mostly resulting from their long participation in neighborhood groups and anti-war movements, to people seen as a being a part of Berlin's radical left-wing scene. Ideas and contacts are mixed by the prosecution into a cocktail of 'terrorist activities.'

Gentrification plays a critical part in this story. [...]

Scholars have studied this process, which takes its name from the root of the word, gentry, used for the English landed aristocracy, since the 1960s. [...]

This kind of research has now gotten some academics into trouble. In a bizarre series of developments, the German Federal Prosecutor has accused a sociologist, a political scientist, as well as a student and a social movement activist of 'terrorism.' One prominent scholar, Dr. Andrej Holm, was in solitary confinement in a Berlin jail for almost a month and came out only on bail, with charges still standing; another one, Dr. Matthias B. has had his apartment raided, his computer confiscated and is under investigation for belonging to a terrorist association.

All accused have been charged under a section of German criminal law, 129a, which was passed in 1976 [...], when the government pulled out all the stops to defeat the terrorist threat of the Baader-Meinhof group [...]. It is directed in particular at exposing and destroying links between the 'doers' and the 'thinkers' in movements. From its inception, it has been criticized for allowing the state to criminalize both activists and researchers by claiming that together they form a terrorist association. It seems that 31 years after it saw the light of day, the law has finally created its perfect storm.

[Off hand, I'd tend to say that they are being prosecuted for printing viewpoints counter to neo-capitalist aims. That's just a knee-jerk response, however. I don't really think that Germany is indicting academics for terrorism for publishing viewpoints that run counter to the conventional wisdom about gentrification that governments are bribed to believe in by transnational corporations. This is, however, a very threatening shove down the slippery slope. What impact do you suppose its going to have on academe when people realize that the most innocent seeming research can end up with their being subjected to that kind of persecution? --MN]

By citizens of Russia. An article by the Tass news agency on this day reports that Russians who are frustrated at television reports they see as having a pro-Kremlin bias are turning to web journals and internet forums to debate political issues. Masha Lipman, a political expert at the Moscow Carnegie Center, says that web forums like Live Journal are providing an arena for free debate no longer available in much of the conventional media. She is quoted: "There is indeed a lot of free exchange on the Internet. The question in Russia is not that there are no outlets where free expression is possible. The question is that the Kremlin has radically marginalized all outlets that pursue even reasonably independent editorial lines." Yulia Latynina, a political commentator whose columns are frequently posted on Live Journal, is likewise quoted: "Actually, I think the internet is one of the reasons Russia is still not an authoritarian regime, because you cannot really shut down the internet without very serious measures." Most Russians get news and current affairs reporting from three main television channels which are controlled by the government or state-owned enterprises, although there is a handful of independently owned television and radio stations, and some of the national newspapers provide some alternative to the Kremlin's view of events.

Earlier this year, President Vladimir Putin had created a new government agency to monitor the media and the internet. This sparked concern that sites such as Live Journal would be censored. Opposition parties in Russia, for instance, frequently use Live Journal and similar websites to disseminate information about upcoming political rallies. Critics of the government say the agency will allow the Kremlin to stifle opposition voices on websites and introduce Soviet-era controls in the run-up to the December parliamentary election, and a presidential vote in spring of 2008. Ms. Lipman, however, says the way the government approaches sites like Live Journal is more sophisticated: "The Kremlin has lots of sites under its control, financed by businesses associated with the Kremlin or otherwise, which create an environment in which those more independent ones are easily dissolved. This dissolution, I think, is one thing that the Kremlin is using to counter or neutralize the potentially stirring effect." And these websites, are often difficult to spot: "It's not that they are necessarily loyal or produce bland propaganda, similar to what you see on television. They may be critical themselves, but this will be criticism that the Kremlin itself sort of oversees."

By the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The issue before the court was to be whether Janet Jackson's bared breast was indecent, or merely a fleeting and accidental glitch that shouldn't be punished. CBS challenged the fine, claiming "fleeting, isolated or unintended" images should not automatically be considered indecent. The agency noted that it has long held that: "even relatively fleeting references may be found indecent where other factors contribute to a finding of patent offensiveness." The FCC levied a fine of 550,000 USD, which CBS is contesting.

[What nobody seems to have noticed in this asinine reactionism is that breasts do not conform in any way to the U.S Supreme Court definition of indecency. They are neither sexual or excretory organs. See my commentary on the Janet Jackson Tit Affair. --MN]

By Woodlan Junior-Senior High School. With a new academic year getting underway, the school has a new system for student participation on its newspaper and yearbook staffs, one implemented by Principle Edwin Yoder, who is supported by Jan MacLean, the deputy superintendent at East Allen Country Schools. Both media were formerly advised by Amy Sorrell, who was punished in a paroxysm of censorial intolerance after the newspaper published an op/ed piece stating that homosexuals should also be granted respect for their human dignity. The tipping point for the school adminstration was when the piece discussed the rate of suicide among homosexuals, and questioned religion-inspired intolerance. When the administration opted to be intractable, in late Feb this year, the superintendent's office revised district policy to name the principal as "publisher" and giving him full authority over student publications. The yearbook will operate as an extracurricular activity meeting before or after school, and the newspaper will rely on submissions from English classes. In short: The former newspaper called The Tomahawk, will now be a vehicle for publishing homework.

According to the source article for this entry, this move is necessary due to only four students signing up for the journalism class. Ms. MacLean said that if more students sign up for the class next year, she said the school would find an instructor. That the paper is now a venue for censor controlled political correctness is made apparent by two factors: Ms. Mclean's statement that: "Now all students will have a chance to contribute. We are not doing anything to discourage the students", and that, under the new policy, English teachers will have students respond to a given topic using various styles of writing, including persuasion, opinion and perspective pieces, from which the teachers will select the best articles and ask their authors for permission to publish the pieces. The consequences of this debacle, aside from the collapse of the journalism course and school journalism there, includes:

• The school had given students the option of taking journalism at another school in the district. Sara Randall, a senior and last year's assistant editor, was the only student to pursue that option. She is quoted: "During my lunch I drive to New Haven. I write for the paper for a period and then I drive back to Woodlan. It's time consuming and inconvenient."

• Ms. Randall said it is disappointing to hear about the change to Woodlan's newspaper, and further said that after Ms. Sorrell's departure the students lost interest in writing for the newspaper.

• Ms. Sorrell, two weeks into her new job, said it sounded like the newspaper would become more literary with "random ranting."

• Cortney Carpenter, the paper's editor from last year, said she does not want anything she writes for English class printed in the newspaper. Witnessing the change has been discouraging for her, and she commented: "I'm done with newspapers. This experience has ruined journalism for me."

(see 20 Mar 2007, 28 Apr 2007, 12 Sep 2007)

By AOL and Microsoft-Hotmail. On this day, an article was published at TruthOut.org titled AOL/Microsoft-Hotmail Preventing Delivery of Truthout Communications. In it, TruthOut Executive Director Marc Ash wrote:

Currently, AOL- and Microsoft-related email providers, including Hotmail, are preventing delivery of a range of Truthout communications to thousands of our subscribers. Such communications include Truthout's regular newsletters and notifications to our subscribers from individual workstations of Truthout administrators informing those subscribers that they are affected.

For the most part, all other ISPs appear to be delivering Truthout communications normally.

While AOL has been largely evasive and silent about their reasons for blocking communications, our server logs and complaints from subscribers illustrate a clear pattern of interference. Microsoft-Hotmail, while not being forthcoming about their actions to the subscribers involved, have stated to our administrators that they are in fact "throttling" and "blocking" our communications. Further, the Microsoft-Hotmail administrators inform us that they are blocking our communications to Truthout subscribers on their systems due to what they describe as our "reputation."

By U.S. federal Judge Leon Holmes. Judge Holmes found that while the Watson Chapel School District dress code policy is indeed legal, punishing students for protesting it is not. In his judgement, he noted that district officials did not dispute that the students were punished because their armbands were part of a protest, and that they also admitted the armbands did not disrupt the school. The court still must rule on a permanent injunction that would bar the district from punishing students who wear similar protest armbands in the future.

Curiously, the jury violated his instructions to them that the were required to award at least one dollar in damages to the three plaintiffs, and awarded nothing at all. This is an issue that he will have to address when he makes his final judgement. That judgement will also concern the school's policy of prior review and restraint which was used to punish Chris Lowry for passing out literature without permission. The court had ruled on 22 Aug that the literature policy was probably unconstitutional since it provided no guidelines as to what material could br rejected. The salient feature about the lack of an award is that Michael Dennis, the school district's attorney, seized upon it crow that the jury had reached a decision in favour of the district; totally ignoring the fact that the judge found the district as guilty as sin.
(see 27 Aug 2007)

By America On-Line and MicroSoft. See the entry on the TruthOut cesnorship page.

By Audrey Wagstaff, graduate assistant and researcher at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Kent State, Ohio. Ms. Wendy Wallace, director of the high school journalism program at the Poynter Institute, which is a journalism education group based in, St. Petersburg, Florida, gets the credit for this project's initial concept. Ms. Wallace contacted faculty at Kent State, who then relayed the idea to Ms. Wagstaff. What Ms. Wagstaff did, was to compile recent cases involving the censorship or prior review of student presses, and then organized it into an interactive format using the Google search engine map service. A searcher can browse a map of the United States that is marked with color-coded pushpins, which represent the location of individual cases, and high schools and colleges. Clicking on a pin will bring up information on each incident including the name of teh publication, the issue at hand, and a brief summary. The pop-up box will also includes links to relevant news articles. Ms. Wagstaff commented about it: "It's visual, it's interactive. It's not just reading text. Our main audience is high school and college advisers. I think it's a good tool for high school advisers to become aware, especially those that don't realize that prior review is an issue."

By the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. On this day, an American Atheists newsletter reported that the Roman Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights had savagely attacked Ms. Griffin for her acceptance speech for an Emmy Award. American Atheists describes the league as "a watch-dog group that targets anything it considers to be counter to religious sensibilities." What has the League in such an uproar is that Ms. Griffin, who won a creative arts Emmy for "My Life on the D-List," departed from the usual ritual of citing religious influences and beliefs for career success. She said:

"A lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus. Suck it, Jesus, this award is my god now."

League President William Donahue quickly released a statement to the press in which he condemned her acceptance routine as "obscene and blasphemous," and "a vulgar in-your-face brand of hate speech." The Academy announced shortly afterwards that it would excise the supposedly offensive portions of Griffin's remarks, which were pre-taped, from the awards ceremony broadcast on the E! Entertainment Channel on 15 Sep. William Donahue, not satisfied enough that the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences caved in to censorship, then insisted, within hours of the Academy's decision, that Ms. Griffin apologize for her speech; a demand equal to asking her to apologize for her personal beliefs.

[How in the name of Hell can you possibly call your polity a defender of religious rights and civil liberties while attacking utterances of personal religious viewpoints so savagely, without engaging in double think? What a pack of assholes these festering idiots are. Ms. Griffin is a comic in the tradition of Lenny Bruce and George Carlin; her comedy is a deliberate attack to push the envelope, and she apparently does not restrict her broadsides to any particular group. Therefore Donahue's bombast about hate speech and bigotry is just a lot of reactionary bullshit. --MN]

By the town of Mansfield, Louisiana. A law violating freedom of expression by way of sagging pants was due to go into effect in this town on this day; city attorney Richard Z. Johnson Jr. said he based this law on the one in Delcambre, and apparently several municipalities and parish governments in Louisiana have now enacted similar laws in the last few months. Anyone caught wearing sagging pants so as to expose his or her underwear will be subject to a fine of up to one hundred fifty USD plus court costs, or face up to fifteen days in jail. The law reportedly makes it illegal to found in a "state of nudity, or partial nudity, or in any indecent exposure of his or her person or undergarments, or be guilty of any indecent or lewd behavior." According to an op-ed piece by Alex Jung of AlterNet.org (reproduced here almost in its entirety), enacting such laws is becoming a movement, and that despite protestations about decency and morality, this is simply more institutionalizing of racism:

The logic of the rule, is "race-blind" and relying on standards of "decency," regardless of the fact that purveyors of the style are black men. In the West Ward of Trenton, Councilwoman Annette Lartigue is drafting an ordinance to fine or enforce community service to curb this national epidemic. She said,

"It's a fad like hot pants; however, I think it crosses the line when a person shows their backside. You can't legislate how people dress, but you can legislate when people begin to become indecent by their body parts."

Has she actually seen anyone wear sagging jeans? There's pretty clearly no actual skin exposure involved, and certainly nothing vaguely comparable to hot pants. Moral decency isn't really the issue here. Essentially, lawmakers are trying to control a group they see as "threatening" -- young, black men. Since people are more likely to believe that black men committed violent crimes (whether they did it or not is unimportant), it now follows that we should simply outlaw whatever it is that black men do that's too, you know, black.

This law comes out of a long, line of post-Civil Rights era impositions that weren't outright racist against people of color, but were instead used to restrict or stop their actions. For example, New York courts defended American Airlines' sacking of a black woman for wearing cornrows because the policy was supposedly banning a hairstyle, not an identity. Black people are still allowed to work there; they just have to be black people that look more like white people.

On 06 Sep, a piece by Earl Ofari Hutchinson of New America Media, titled, Will They Arrest Britney in Mansfield for Sagging Pants?, was reprinted at AlterNet.org. Overall, the piece is an excellent formulation of the contextual issues surrounding both the fashion and the reactions against it; Mr Hutchinson commented in part:

But we all know that the screwy, harebrained law that the fashion censors in Mansfield and a handful of other Louisiana cities passed in recent years that mandate fines, community service, and now jail time for sagging pants wearers don't really apply to the male or female Britneys of the world. They apply to young black males. The laws are much more than a terribly wrong headed effort to regulate public dress, decency, discipline or moral values. They reinforce the worst media and publicly ingrained stereotype of young black males as drug dealers, drive by shooters, gang bangers and educational cripples.

Sagging pants are an easy and convenient symbol of the supposed dereliction and menace of young blacks. The consequence of that symbol and thinking has been devastating. Despite the plummet in crime rates, racial stereotypes have deeply embedded the popular and terrifying belief that crime in America comes exclusively with a young, black male face. The result: nearly one million blacks are now warehoused in America's jails, the majority of them young blacks, and a significant number of them are there for non-violent, petty drug crimes.

Sagging pants are such a soft and juicy target for the scapegoat of young black males that even comedian Bill Cosby couldn't resist taking a swipe at it and them in his now legendary tirade a couple of years ago against low-achieving, badly behaving young blacks. He fingered sagging pants as proof to him that they had become a menace. Cosby later made a partial recant of his knock and explained that it was a call for action and not a broad brush stroke indictment of all young black males. But it was too little, too late. The sagging pants equals black male perversity notion was even more firmly imprinted in the public psyche[.]

[Pompous-ass Lartique put her finger on the problem there: " . . . you can legislate when people begin to become indecent by their body parts." The crux of this argument, as I mentioned in a previous comment, is that the body parts in question must actually be indecent, not merely considered to be indecent, and buttocks do not meet the U.S. Supreme Court definition for indecency. These laws are, at the very least, chickenshit bullshit. And, by the way, that section reading, "state of nudity, or partial nudity" could be interpreted by any reasonable person as to pertain to any exposed skin whatever, including bare hands or feet, which means all persons within the jurisdiction of Mansfield would be required to wear Talibanesque burghas. --MN]

[Addendum (06 Oct 2007:) For more on how this movement is one part inherently racist and one part an anti-youth culture movement, see Cities cracking down on saggy pants, at the First Amendment Center web site. --MN]

By Fox. In fact Fox reportedly made a few cut-a-ways during the evening. When Katherine Heigl clearly said "shit" -- in a bit of a shock from having won the Best Supporting Actress award for Grey's Anatomy -- the camera view quickly shifted to the ceiling, and it happened a second time during Ray Romano's routine -- which was said to have appeared harmless -- before he presented an award. These expurgations might have stemmed from the hypersensitivity of the self-righteous, but when Ms. Field took the stage to accept her Emmy, the network censored her core political speech. What Fox viewers heard her say was: "If mothers ruled the world, there wouldn't be any god - " What she actually said was: "If mothers ruled the world, there wouldn't be any god-damned wars in the first place."

Entertainment Weekly subsequently reported that, when she asked for her reaction to the censorship, Ms. Field replied: "I have no comment other than, 'Oh, well.' I said what I wanted to say."

By Costa Rica. On 14 Sep, Costa Rica's directorate of migration notified the Cuban consul that it has issued a humanitarian visa for Normando Hernández González. José Maria Penabad, formally submitted the request to Cuban foreign minister Felipe Pérez Roque on this day. The visa was issued at the request of parliamentarian José Manuel Echandi, who has been trying for several months to have Mr. Hernández, who is now seriously ill, flown to Costa Rica. Mr. Hernández, the director of the Colegio de Periodistas Independientes de Camagüey independent news agency, was arrested on 24 Mar 2003 with 26 other journalists. He was arbitrarily accused of spying and threatening state security, and given a 25-year prison sentence. Suffering from tuberculosis, he went on a hunger strike in Mar of this year to protest mistreatment, denial of the right to visits and prison leave, poor food, and other unacceptable conditions. He was transferred to Carlos J. Finlay hospital in Havana on 14 Sep.

Reporters Without Borders commented:

"Humanitarian concerns are clearly paramount as regards all prisoners of conscience, especially the 20 journalists held since March 2003 in very harsh conditions. We hail the Costa Rican government's efforts to have Hernández moved to Costa Rica so that he can received appropriate treatment for his condition, which is now alarming."

"We strongly hope the Cuban foreign ministry will accede to this request from Costa Rica, which as [sic] already issued a visa for Hernández. We also hope other governments will support this initiative and will take similar initiatives on behalf of other imprisoned journalists."

By U.S. District Judge Robin Cauthron. See the entry on the Child Porn/Harmful to Minors page.

By U.S. District Judge Joseph A. Greenaway Jr. Judge Greenaway sided with the parents of two students, from two separate schools in northern New Jersey, who wore buttons featuring a picture of Hitler Youth in protest of a school-uniform policy. He did rule, however, that the buttons could not be distributed at school. The buttons bear the words "no school uniforms" with a slash through them superimposed on a photo of young boys wearing identical shirts and neckerchiefs. There are no swastikas visible on the buttons, but all parties agreed they depicted members of the Hitler Youth. The students had been threatened with suspension by the Bayonne school district last fall for wearing the buttons. Bayonne Superintendent of Schools Patricia L. McGeehan said the school district was disappointed in the decision and would review its options; she is quoted: "We are very concerned with the precedent this may set, not only for Bayonne but for every public school district in New Jersey that tries to create and maintain a school environment conducive to learning and that is not offensive to students and staff." The school district's lawyers based their defense on the assertion that the image of the Hitler Youth was abhorrent because it conveyed intolerance and racial inequality represented by Nazism, and could be censored under Bethel v: Fraser. The defense further argued that Tinker does not apply to elementary students or that the Tinker test is "relaxed significantly for elementary schools." An argument Judge Greenaway rejected.

Ms. Morgen said she thinks the district will now try to settle with the students. Ms. McGeehan's post-ruling statement, however, said only that the district will consult with its lawyers to consider its legal options. She also, in a clear and present misrepresentation, expressed her concern about the precedent this ruling would create by allowing students "to wear buttons prominently displaying Nazi images in school." In point of fact, the images could as easily have been of a Boy Scout Troop.

[I guess the fact that the uniformity, regimentation, and utter-blind compliance with authority that is demanded by the school district is an actual practice of the intolerance of Naziism sort of went right over their pointy, little heads. I also guess the fact that there was no naziist symbology by which anyone could be offended is also irrelevant. And I still have to wonder if these school officious aren't "offended" because the intimation of naziism strikes a little too close to home. Oh, yeah! The precedent one might set by allowing students to criticize authority. Why! They might even grow up to someday question the president or members of the government instead of blindly doing what they are told. And I'd like to see that brain-dead dipshit try to demonstrate how silent protest is disruptive. Pfah! --MN]
(see 11 Dec 2006)

By Jennifer Flynn. In an article titled Activist Silenced for Fear of Surveillance, which was reprinted at CommonDreams.org, Rocco Parascandola writes about the life of fear in which Ms. Flynn now lives. She is an activist, and in 2004, leading up the Republican National Convention, she helped to organize a rally by the New York City AIDS Housing Network, an organization of which she is co-founder. Ms. Flynn was the subject of surveillance by persons and agencies unknown. She was watched from a car during a visit to her family, followed by that vehicle and two others when she left to return home, and watched again at her home by two men in a fourth vehicle. No one investigating the incident has been able to determine what agency mounted the surveillance, and the one licence plate number she got was traced back to an address that does not exist and a post office box in an upstate, New York rural town. Ms. Flynn commented about the affect of the incident on her: "I feel like I've stepped back. I feel I'm not as vocal as I was. I'm still going to sign a petition. I'm still going to organize a rally. I do it. But now I'm deathly afraid"; and: "When you use scare tactics, you really are curbing our right to dissent against the government," she said. "The only thing this is serving to do is squash public dissent. By going after the organizers of a rally, you really are sending a message - 'Don't hold a rally.'" She also said that she has seen the chilling effect of the anti-dissension movement on the ardor of other activists as well.

By Rebecca Evans and Brandon Hammer, of AlterNet.org. Their piece, Ahmadinejad's Speech at Columbia University Is as American as Apple Pie, was published at the indy media site on this day. Their piece illustrates the vested societal interest in allowing freedom of speech even from those whose views we find repugnant. Their point is found in the summation:

Many of those who oppose Ahmadinejad's visit call him the second Hitler. If this is the case, why should we allow him to spread his hate without having to account for his claims? Why would we not embrace and take advantage of this opportunity to question his actions and challenge his ideology, as those in Iran cannot? Exemplifying free speech within this country, especially to those whose views are so repugnant, will challenge hateful ideologies and demonstrate the importance of discourse.

By U.S. District Judge Walter Rice. On this day he ruled against an Ohio law that was intended to restrict the dissemination of sexually oriented material over the Internet. The law prohibits people from sending, over the Internet, communications that are supposedly harmful to minors, if the sender knows or should know that the recipient is a minor. Judge Rice ruled against the law on two First Amendment grounds:

• it was too broadly written and could have ensnared adults having sexually frank discussions with other adults in chat rooms, as in those cases there is no way to ensure minors were not part of the conversation;
• the law violated the First Amendment by failing to target only people who intended to disseminate sexually oriented material to children with the intent to lure them into sexual activity.

Ted Hart, spokesman for Marc Dann, the Ohio Attorney General, said the state was reviewing the decision and would consider its options.

[Here's an option: write laws in such a way that they will actually be enforceable. --MN]

Mike and Shelly Udink and their son Kalei, respectively. See the entry on the Vanity Licence Plates

By a number of literary-based institutions, including the currently soft-on-book-burning-and-communist-oppression American Library Association. Under the thumb of dogmatic moralists, the ALA has continued, as of this date, to actively reject any lobbying to have the Cuban, court-ordered burnings of private collections listed on its Book Burning in the 21st Century web page, or for a resolution condemning the Castro government for human rights violations.

[The thing about the self-righteous moralising of the ALA dogmatists is that it is founded entirely on a misapplied opposition to U.S. government interventionism in foreign sovereignties. Typical of the post-WTC attacks environment in the U.S., the ALA dogmatists refuse to brook any criticism in any way, shape, or form, no matter how soundly based on fact that criticism might be. In this case, however, the criticisms they will not brook are of the Castro regime instead of the Bush regime. Their rationalizing has gone so far overboard, in fact, that it has entered the realm of conspiracy theory. See my commentary on the ALA framing of the Cuban Indy Librarians issue, and the the Cuban Indy Library Affair web page. --MN]

By the ACLU of Texas. In this, the 11th annual report on censorial challenges in Texas schools, the ACLU of Texas examined two previously disregarded factors in school-based censorship: Accelerated Reader status and Administrative or Informal Banning. See my commentary on these issues. --MN]

By Allan Ginsberg. In a repudiation of what constitutes effective censorship by the U.S Federal Communications Commission, and to commemorate the Free Speech victory of People v. Ferlinghetti, Pacifica Radio aired a webcast of a 1959 reading of Howl that was done by Allan Ginsberg. The poem was read aloud on the air for more than thirty years afer the ruling, until the Federal Communications Commission ruled in the late 1980s that television and radio stations could be fined for broadcasting indecent material. That ruling was constrained by the Supreme Court ordering the creation of the Safe Harbour. Despite those two decisions by the Supreme Court and the Law of the Land established by them, FCC censorial disapprobium has created a chilling effect in which the poem is simply not broadcast. Allan Ginsberg's archivist and bibliographer, Bill Morgan, who opposes the FCC indecency regulations, commented to the First Amendment Center Online about the situation:

I'm surprised that even though a ruling was made 50 years ago stating that "Howl" was not obscene, the government today will not stand behind the ruling of their own court. Today the FCC will not allow radio or television stations to air the entire poem as read by Mr. Ginsberg. Their tactic is to be vague and elusive. They will not say that they believe the poem is obscene, because the courts have already said it is not, but they threaten enormous fines for each "bad" word broadcast.

In this country we've been hypnotized into believing that we can exercise free speech, which in fact we can't.

Pacifica producer Janet Coleman commented to the First Amendment Center Online:

• We're commemorating "Howl" to honor the memory of the publication's liberation, and also to note the irony that 50 years later we still can't hear this great poem on the radio. This is our bow to the FCC and the restrictive, draconian fines that they might impose. We hope that people will hear the poem and realize the difficulties and strangulating nature of language censorship and the direct effect of these FCC rules.

• Ginsberg himself wanted this poem to be read aloud. He wanted to break this barrier and considered it a chilling effect because when you censor language, you censor thought.

The Pacifica Webcast, Howl Against Censorship, can be listened to or downloaded from the broadcaster's web site.
(see 03 Oct 1956)

By a Cairns, Australia, department store. Department store Santa John Oakes claims to have been fired on this day for using Santa's laugh and singing. He claims that his employer, U.S.-based agency Westaff, had ordered their Santas to say "ha, ha, ha" instead of "ho, ho, ho" because "ho" is derogatory slang in the United States for "a woman"; the word means "whore". Mr. Oakes is quoted: "After my shift on Monday, I got a call from my manager telling me my services were no longer required. I hadn't done anything wrong so I asked her why, and she said, "You said ho, ho, ho and that's not appropriate". She also said I wasn't supposed to sing, but I was only singing Jingle Bells to get the kids to laugh for their photo. It's just ridiculous and everything's changed because of the new rules.'"

Westaff denies that Mr. Oakes was fired; Bert Jansz, a company spokesman said: "The candidate was not sacked nor was his use of the term 'ho, ho, ho' a factor in our decision. The candidate's attitude was not in line with the requirements of our client and of their customers."

[Employees of an agency who are found to be unsuitable by a client of the agency, are send back to the agency, usually for reassignment elsewhere. Such an employee could be fired depending on his job performance for other clients of the agency, and how much he has adapted to the standards set by the agency. What might have happened here is that the manager overstepped her bounds in interpreting those standards. It also appears from what was written in the source article, that Mr. Oakes might very well have simply resigned from the agency in disgust with the situation, rather than having been fired by Westaff, and there was no mention of what the client's requirements might have been. --MN]

By Customs Canada. On this day, Medea Benjamin and Ann Wright were denied entry into Canada and turned away at the Rainbow Bridge entry point, Niagara Falls, Ontario. They were on their way to meet with Canadian parliamentarians in Toronto. Canada Customs officials turned them both away on the basis a fraudulent arrest records held in the U.S. FBI database called NCIC or National Crime Information Center. This database was created to assist U.S. law enforcement agencies in finding fugitives, convicted sex offenders, missing persons, and members of terrorist organizations and violent gangs. Its purpose is to track dangerous criminals, not peace activists. And Canada is the only foreign country that has access to this database. Neither Ms. Benjamin or Ms. Wright have ever been arrested on criminal matters, only on civil charges; misdemeanors. The arrests, three apiece, stem from acts of civil disobedience. They were turned away as criminals for the equivalent of having unpaid parking tickets or for jaywalking. On 18 Oct, she published an op/ed piece in which she decried this complicity in the Bush administration suppression of lawful dissent; Canada: We come in peace, was reprinted at the Canadian indy media web site rabble.ca. In it, Ms. Benjamin pointed out how far reaching this kind suppression could become, and why this case should be considered so worrisome:

As we pointed out to the Canadian press and parliamentarians, if Canada's policy of excluding anyone with a misdemeanor conviction were truly enforced, the results would be absurd.

• Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks and Cesar Chavez would never have entered the country.
• Dolores Huerta of farmworker fame would be barred for her 22 arrests for workers' rights.
• Actor Martin Sheen, the President in the TV series West Wing and a devout Catholic, would be blacklisted for his 70 arrests promoting struggles from a living wage to nuclear disarmament.
• Singer Bonnie Raitt would be expelled for protesting the clearcutting of forests.
• Actress Daryl Hannah would be inadmissible for trying to save an urban garden in Los Angeles.
• Americans arrested for protesting the Iraq war, and therefore "inadmissible", would include Nobel Prize winner Jody Williams, writer Alice Walker, Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, peace mom Cindy Sheehan, as well as thousands of ordinary schoolteachers, nurses, retirees and college students.

At a press conference outside the Canadian Embassy in Washington DC the day after our ouster, I mentioned that Canada is the only foreign country using this FBI database. A journalist sidled up to me afterwards and said, in confidence, "If I were you, instead of saying Canada is the only country, I'd say Canada is the first to use the U.S. database. Canada is a bellwether. If it gets away with this, other countries, under U.S. pressure, will follow. And your world will become smaller and smaller."

[The above extracted material has undergone editorial reformatting, but is otherwise reproduced verbatim. --MN]
(see 25 Oct 2007)

By Cuban police. Church officials and rights activists reported plainclothes police kicked their way into the Roman Catholic church Santa Teresita in Santiago, eastern Cuba, beat and used pepper spray on a group of dissidents, and removed seven of them in handcuffs. The detainees were among a group of two dozen people who had marched through the streets to protest the arrest of a fellow dissident. They were at the church to attend Mass and had mingled with parishioners, although the attack seems to have happened in the parish hall, rather than the church proper. Parish priest Jose Conrado Rodriguez, who has been himself highly and publicly critical of the Castro government, said the police action was led by a lieutenant colonel of the state security forces dressed in civilian clothes and who gave no explanations. By 06 Dec, Monsignor Dionisio Garcia was engaged in dialogue about the incident with the Office of Religious Affairs (of the Central Committee of the Communist Party). The Cuban government publicly apologized on 08 Dec for what had happened.

In an e-mail to the Freadom newsgroup, Robert Kent, co-founder of Friends of Cuban Libraries, commented on the apology: It is quite surprising, although similar crackdowns are occurring in other places in advance of Dec. 10, International Human Rights Day, when dissidents traditionally stage public protests. The apology might be related to the fact that the new archbishop in Santiago (where the raid occurred) is said to be less antagonistic toward the regime than his predecessor, Archbishop Meuric Perhaps the government is trying to get off to a good start with the new archbishop by apologizing for the raid. But, like many things that happen in Cuba, this interpretation is pure theory.

By West Lafayette School Corporation. Caitlyn Casseday and several other students were punished after criticizing an administrator on a Facebook group site; Ms. Casseday having copped an in-school suspension on this day. A Facebook group site was formed to support a student who had been suspended after an altercation in a computer lab. The students in the group believed that the administration had unfairly punished the student and banded together to protest his suspension. Ms. Casseday was given her suspension for calling an administrator an "ass". Another student was punished for posting a video of the altercation online and may face expulsion. Rocky Killion, the West Lafayette School Corporation superintendent, said the district makes a "case-by-case determination" on when to punish students for off-campus speech. He also said that court rulings say that "political speech and opinion speech" is protected but that speech that falls outside of that definition may be regulated, and added that the Student Conduct Code could be applied whenever students are writing about administrators, teachers or students online; and that the district scrutinizes off-campus speech if it "causes a disruption in the educational process." However, John Bowen, a journalism instructor at Kent State University who specializes in student press rights, in reference to Tinker v: Des Moines, replied to that point with: "There has to be essentially an immediate forecastable disruption in the school process." He is also quoted: "I don't think the school could enforce it. I think the school is way overstretching its authority here."

[And my saying that you're an "ass" is not an opinion in what way? Oh, wait; there's that catchall that allows you to claim my statement has disrupted "the educational process". Yeah; right. I'm willing to give Killion the benefit of the doubt here, as there is no indication that he is being an ass, but people really, really need to understand that the internet is GLOBAL in nature and one's speech cannot be regulated outside of the schoolhouse gates just because it can accessed within those gates. --MN]

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

By Georgia activist James Hood and the Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless. See the entry on the Anti-Phelps Affair page.

By Dawn Herb, of Scranton, Pennsylvania. On this day she used some choice language in frustration at her backed-up and overflowing toilet, situated in her own bathroom, in her private domicile. But the bathroom window was open, and her next door neighbour, a police officer, objected to her choice of words. He asked her to keep it down, but Ms. Herb did not comply, so he called the department and when his colleagues showed up, they charged Ms. Herb with disorderly conduct. She now faces up to 90 days in jail and a fine of up to $300 for this unconscionable invasion of her private residence and her private life. Mary Catherine Roper, who is an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union in Philadelphia, took exception to the citation. She is quoted: "You can't prosecute somebody for swearing at a cop or a toilet. We bring one of these cases a year and sue some police departments because they do not remember that they are not the language police."

[The U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled that swearing at a cop is protected speech; apparently it will now have to make a similar ruling as to swearing at a toilet. --MN]
(see 13 Dec 2007)

By Miami, Miami-Dade County, Hialeah, and the Broward Sheriff's Office. On this day Miami city commissioners approved City Hall's share of the so-far largest legal settlement resulting from police misconduct at the 2003 Free Trade Area of the Americas summit. There was reportedly little discussion and no formal admission of culpability; in point of fact, comments made at the voting indicate that the settlement is merely a payout to make the problem go away. City Attorney Jorge Fernandez told commissioners, "Absolutely, our position is our police department acted at all times appropriately", and then went on to say that the deal was in the city's best interest. Miami Police Chief John Timoney, who masterminded the multiagency FTAA police effort, called the settlement: "Strictly a business decision"; he went to explain that Miami had a good legal case, but the expense of drawn-out court battles made settling the preferred option.

The total settlement is 561,000 USD, of which the city of Miami will pay 166,000. Before the Miami council vote, Hialeah had already chipped in $39,500, the Broward Sheriff's Office, $3,000, and Miami-Dade County had not yet voted on its proposed $352,500 contribution. It is to be divided among twenty-one FTAA protesters who alleged that heavy-handed police violated their constitutional rights. See the source article for more background.

by Naomi Wolf. Originally published by The Huffington Post on this day, it was reprinted at CommonDreams.org on 13 Oct. In it, she illustrates the cliamte of fear in which some dissendents now live, and how they regard the degradation of American democracy, liberties, and freedom by their own government. She also illustrates the witchhunt mentality of that government:

This morning in Denver I talked for almost an hour to a brave, much-decorated high-level military man who is not only on the watch list for his criticism of the administration -- his family is now on the list. His elderly mother is on the list. His teenage son is on the list. He has flown many dangerous combat missions over the course of his military career, but his voice cracks when he talks about the possibility that he is exposing his children to harassment.

Ms. Wolf also admitted how the climate of fear affects even her:

Before I go into the security lines, I find myself editing my possessions. In New York's LaGuardia, I reluctantly foudd [sic] myself putting a hardcover copy of Tara McKelvey's excellent Monstering, an expose of CIA interrogation practices, in a garbage can before I get in the security line; it is based on classified information. This morning at my hotel, before going to the sirport [sic], I threw away a very nice black T-shirt that said "We Will Not be Silenced" -- with an Arabic translation -- that someone had given me, along with a copy of poems written by detainees at Guantanamo.

[Unfortunately, the piece then goes on to at least skirt the edge of conspiracy theory, if not cross the line altogether. While I agree with Ms. Wolf that crimes against humanity are being perpetrated to effect retribution, I would not yet agree with her assessment that it is all part of a top-down criminal operation by the Bush regime. I am still of the opinion that the criminal activity is a reflection of the characteristics of the command; contemptuous of human liberty, of human dignity, of human life. I do, however, agree fully with her assessment: "Is it obvious yet that criminals are at the helm of the nation and need to be not only ousted but held accountable for their crimes?" --MN]

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

By Big Brother government. See the entry on the COINTELPRO page.

By Canadian independent media. Media Democracy Day is an annual day of action occurring at the end of October; it based on three themes:

• Education: focused on understanding how the media shapes our world and our democracy.
• Protest: against a media system based on commercialization and exclusiveness.
• Change: calling for media reforms that respond to public interests, promote diversity, and ensure community representation and accountability.

MDD is modeled after EarthDay, and is a locally based and decentralized cluster event anchored in Vancouver B.C., and Toronto, Ontario, although many other cities have held MDD events as well. One of the key elements of this day is the Media Democracy Fair (also called an Independent Media Fair), which provides an opportunity for independent media outlets, media advocacy groups, community groups, and media democracy activists to exchange information and display their work to the public. For this year well over fifty groups from across Canada were to participate. According to Bob Hackett, communication scholar at the Simon Fraser School of Communication and author of Remaking Media, the significance of Media Democracy Day is that it "brings different communities together in a common stake even if they didn’t know they had one." At the Media Democracy web site, the term is defined thusly:

Media democracy is a production and distribution model which promotes a system that informs and empowers all members of society, and enhances democratic values.

It is a concept and a social movement that has grown as a response to the increased corporate domination of media. Democratizing the media involves reforming the mass media, strengthening public service broadcasting, and developing independent media and participatory(citizen) media.

Media Democracy broadly encompasses the following notions: that the health of the democratic political system depends on the efficient, accurate, and complete transmission of social, political, and cultural information in society; that the media are the conduits of this information and should act in the public interest; that the mass media have increasingly been unable and uninterested in fulfilling this role due to increased concentration of ownership and commercial pressures; and that this undermines democracy as voters and citizens are unable to participate knowledgeably in public policy debates. Without an informed and engaged citizenry, policy issues become defined by political and corporate elites. A related element of this concept examines the lack of representation of a diversity of voices and viewpoints, particularly of those who have traditionally been marginalized by mass media.

We see great promise in the open communications of the internet and want that openness expanded into every form of media. We envision a global system of communications that has as its foundation in the direct, democratic participation of citizens. To this end, we demand the timely transfer of key media sources back to the people.

By Occidental College. In 2004, student shock jock Jason Antebi was fired from his position as host of a popular student radio show; after three years of political parody, provocative humor, and frequent mockery of the school administration, the student government, and various political and social causes. In Mar 2004, in response to this biting on-air satire, three students filed sexual harassment complaints against him, claiming that his show promoted disrespect and slander" and thus constituted a form of punishable "hostile environment" harassment. The Occidental adminstration then used the controversy as a pretext to dissolve the student government. When College President Ted Mitchell announced his decision to dissolve the student government, of which Antebi was a vice president, he did not refer to Mr. Antebi by name, but virtually all of the reasons he gave for his decision were directly related to the controversy. Shortly thereafter the school found Mr. Antebi guilty of "sexual and gender hostile environment harassment". In doing so, it ignored both the promise of the college to defend free speech, and California's "Leonard Law", which guarantees free speech to students at private colleges and universities in that state.

When criticized for its actions by Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, it then began an aggressive campaign of false accusations and distortions to justify itself. Even, at one point, accusing the American Civil Liberties Union of not understanding its own policies. In 2005, Mr. Antebi sued.

On this day, FIRE announced that Occidental had settled. FIRE President Greg Lukianoff commented: "This settlement finally brings an end to one of the worst cases I have ever seen. While finding a student guilty of 'harassment' simply for making jokes is, sadly, all too common on college campuses, Occidental has distinguished itself through the ruthlessness, dishonesty, and opportunism it has displayed against its own students. Using rude jokes as an excuse to dissolve the entire student government, and then to baselessly accuse a student of a laundry list of criminal acts, puts the Occidental administration in a class by itself."

Mr. Antebi had this to say about the matter: "With regard to the settlement, I can't say much, but I will say that I am very happy with the outcome. It is clear to me that Occidental used the controversy surrounding my show as a pretense for dissolving the student government. I believe FIRE's original investigation into this is dead-on accurate. I don't believe it is a coincidence that many of those named in the lawsuit are no longer employed by Occidental College."

[See the source article for more background. --MN]

By ethnic minorities. On this day the Port Allen City Council voted unanimously to violate freedom of expression. This makes seven Louisiana state towns to jump on the fashion-police bandwagon over the course of this year. Port Allen joins Eunice, Shreveport, Alexandria, Delcambre, Mansfield, Lafourche and Pointe Coupee in discriminating against an ethnic cultural symbol. As with previous incidents, one of the specious rationales was that the exposure of the buttocks -- rather than the anus or genitalia -- constitutes an indecency. Two others Louisiana towns, Lake Charles and the St. Mary Parish town of Baldwin, are currently considering similar ordinances, while the city of Natchitoches rejected a similar proposal put forward there.

By Cormac McCarthy. The book is about a murderer and necrophiliac rapist. A town's outsider who is originally accused falsely of rape, begins killing people and ends up living in a cave with the decomposing bodies of his victims. Kaleb Tierce, a third-year teacher and assistant football coach at Jim Ned High School in Tuscola, Tx, being investigated for allegedly distributing harmful material to a minor after the student selected the book off a ninth-grade class reading list and read it. His parents objected to the contents of the book to Tierce and the school principle; there was no mention of how the complaint was handled, but it could not have been resolved to the satisfaction of the parents, as they filed a police complaint on 01 Oct. On 09 Oct, Mr. Tierce was placed on paid leave. During the week of 14 - 20 Oct, the school board held a meeting where it voted to keep him on paid leave. More than 120 citizens of the 700 person population attended, with most of parents reportedly speaking in favour of reinstatement. He also has the support and respect of the students.

Sgt. John Cummins of the Sherriff's office said the case would be turned over to the district attorney once the investigation was complete, although Mr. Tierce has not yet been charged with any wrongdoing. In Texas, the distribution of material that is harmful to a minor is a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail and a $4,000 fine.

By Stephen Zunes. On this day, Foreign Policy in Focus published a piece about some Bush administration political revisionism; titled US Denial of the Armenian Genocide, it was reprinted at CommonDreams.org on 24 Oct. See my commentary on this issue.

By Customs Canada. Having been invited by the New Democratic Party to speak at an anti-war news conference to be held on this day, Ms Wright, currently a dissenter against the illegal invasion and ongoing occupation of Iraq, flew into Ottawa, the national capital of Canada, where Customs Canada reprised its policy of civil liberities violations in the name of suppressing dissent on behalf of the Bush administration and detained Ms. Wright. This not only constitutes a civil liberties violation in light of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but it also violates Canadian laws which allow the barring only of criminals. Ms. Wright has no felony or criminal convictions, and is therefore, by definition, not a criminal. This action also constitutes a violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights concerning freedom of movement.

Ann Wright is a 29 year US Army veteran who retired as a Colonel and a former US diplomat who resigned in Mar, 2003 to oppose the war on Iraq. She has served in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Mongolia. In Dec 2001 she was on the small team that reopened the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. The US Department of State has delayed publication of her new book Dissent: Voices of Conscience; which will be published whenever the State Department finishes its search for classified materials.
(see 04 Oct 2007)

By the U.S. federal government. Dr. Robert Ferrell, who was sixty-four years of age as of this writing, has had several recurrences of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma since being diagnosed in 1980, and has had a series of strokes since his arrest in 2004. Because of his failing health, he pled guilty, on this day, to a misdemeanor count of "mailing an injurious article". His daughter, Gentry Ferrell, said in a written statement, that her father had agreed to settle the case out of "pure exhaustion." She is quoted: "I remain unable to wrap my mind around the absurdity of the government's pursuit of this case."

Professor Ferrell and Steven Kurtz acknowledged in e-mail exchanges that the bacteria could be harmful to people with weakened immune systems, the prosecutor said, but this appears to be an excuse being seized upon. the federal prosecutors responsible for this harrassment have also said that the prosecution is based on public-safety concerns surrounding the illegal transfer of controlled bacteria; one of the organisms "is used in biological warfare experiments" to "determine what anthrax would do".

That point bears repeating: One of the organisms "is used in biological warfare experiments" to "determine what anthrax would do".

From this, one can only conclude that strain of bacteria alluded to is not dangerous in and of itself, only that it is particularly susceptible to anthrax contagion and is used to test the effectiveness of weaponized anthrax. Following this line of reasoning, the federal prosecutors appears to be operating on the assumption that the possession of non-lethal and unhazardous substances that are only used to test the effects of NBC weapons, constitutes itself NBC warfare and terrorism.

By Ann Wright. This piece, published on this day by CommonDreams.org, details the deliberate and willful obstructionism and civil liberties violations perpetrated by Customs Canada on behalf of the Bush administration. Of particular note is that a customs official invoked a civil liberty, Ms. Wright's right to privacy, in justifying the entire exercise. What apparently did not occur to Ms. Wright is that she also had a right to have a representative present at any interrogation, and she could ha ve asked for one of the elected officials. Moreover, Ms. Wright was held incommunicado for the period of detention. Ms. Wright also wrote about how some dissenters were removed from a U.S. government hearing for no apparent reason whatever.

[Personally, I am certain that the customs official would not have respected her right to have a legal representative present, but it would certainly have driven home the point that Canada Customs generally considers itself to be above laws that degrade their ability to control the movement of people or written materials. Especially in light of the fact that the Canadaian Charter of Rights and Freedoms contains a clause that specifically says that no right or freedom supercedes, or abrogates or derogates from any other right or freedom. --MN]

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

By the New York City Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting. A post-WTC attack plan that would have required a permit and a $1 million insurance policy is undergoing revision. The original plan would have applied to any filming or photography that involved two or more people at a given location for half an hour or more, and for five or more people using a tripod for more than 10 minutes. Under the new proposal, the permit and insurance requirements will not apply to productions that st ay out of traffic and leave open at least half of or eight feet of a public walkway, whichever was greater. They can use tripods, but will be required to get permits for vehicles or such equipment as lights or cables, and filmmakers who can not afford the insurance will be able to ask officials to waive that requirement. The new proposal generally lets filmmakers and photographers with hand-held equipment shoot at will in parks and on sidewalks if they don't create too much of an obstruction.

The proposed rules stem from an NYCLU lawsuit involving an independent filmmaker who was detained in midtown Manhattan in 2005, for using a handheld video camera; some photo- and video-graphers have essentially been accused of intelligence gathering for international terrorists for filming buildings or traffic tunnels. The NYCLU argued in part that the city had never properly enacted film-permit regulations. That case was settled and the film office agreed to formalize its rules.

by Ellen Wittinger. In Sep, Brookwood High School sophomore Lysa Harding checked out this book from from her school library and, after she read it, she refused to return it. Her contention was that its graphic descriptions of oral sex made it inappropriate for a school library. After a debate, a review committee decided that the book should be returned to the library shelves. The review committee comprised the school librarian, Principal Laura McBride, an English teacher, a social studies teacher, and a parent. The decision is on hold, however, because Ms. Harding, and her grandmother, Pam Pennington, are appealing it to the Tuscaloosa County school board. The complainants had engaged in clear and present censorship during the review process by holding the book hostage. [verify that concept of book as hostage]

The novel tells about promiscuous, 15-year-old Sandpiper Hollow Ragsdale, who engages in random hook-ups, with fellatio being her sexual activity of choice. According to the review by the School Library Journal, the novel takes a bold stance on sexual relationships and carries the overall theme that oral sex is sex in the the same way as vaginal intercourse, and has consequences.

[This appeal is, of course, perfectly within their rights. What is not within their rights is they're unilaterally keeping the book out of public circulation by refusing to return it. An action for which, I say, they should be indicted for theft. Despite Ms. Pennington's offer to pay for the book. And apparently, the idea that "outercourse" sexual activity has consequences is not one that should be taught to young adults who are facing their own choices about becoming sexually active. Gohd forbid any sexual stirrings should be considered subject to an informed choice, even if that choice is to remain chaste. --MN]
(see 10 Dec 2007)

By We the People. Albert Snyder of York, Pennsylvania, had sued the Westboro Baptist Church for unspecified monetary damages after churchmembers held a demonstration at the funeral of his son, Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, in Mar 2006. On this day, a federal jury awarded him 2.9 million USD in compensatory damages after finding the church and three of its leaders liable for invasion of privacy and intent to inflict emotional distress. The jury also subsequently went into deliberations to determine punitive damages, although the compensation is three times the networth of the church. The plaintiffs, Fred Phelps and his two daughters Shirley Phelps-Roper and Rebecca Phelps-Davis, had testified that they are following their religious beliefs by spreading the message that the deaths of soldiers in Iraq are due to a tolerance for homosexuality. Their attorneys had argued in closing statements that the burial was a public event and that even abhorrent points of view are protected by freedom of speech and freedom of religion provisions. The jury's decision effectively finds that the Westboro churchmember's rights do not outweigh the right of grieving families to a certain measure of privacy in which to grieve. See the Anti-Phelps Affair for more background.

By an Ohio appeals court. in Sep 2006, Lorien D. Bourne and some of her friends gathered in a public park to form a "Solidarity Potluck" to raise awareness of sexism and double standards. Calling themselves the Titty Committee, several of the women, Ms. Bourne among them, removed their shirts. Having received complaints about the display, an officer issued citations for disorderly conduct to several women. A Bowling Green municipal court found Bourne guilty of the charges and imposed a $25 fine plus court costs, and she appealed to the state appeals court, arguing that the conviction violated her freedom of expression, and her 14th Amendment equal-protection rights. This last because men can go shirtless in public, often without incident, while women face criminal punishment for the same activity.

On this day the appeals court rejected both arguments. It rejected her equal-protection claim with the opinion: "This court does agree that there are occasions where shirtless males are offensive. However, we cannot ignore the firmly rooted societal differences between male and female anatomy." In considering her freedom of expression argument the court applied the four-part test from the U.S. Supreme Court decision U.S. v. O'Brien (1968), which provides that a law or regulation affecting speech and conduct is constitutional if:

• The government has the power to issue the regulation.
• The government has a substantial interest in its regulation.
• The government's substantial interest is not related to the suppression of free expression.
• The restriction on First Amendment freedoms is no greater than necessary to further the government's interest.

The appeals court found that the city had the power to pass the disorderly conduct law and that it had a substantial interest in "maintaining peace and order and protecting social norms." The court further determined that the city's interest in maintaining order was unrelated to suppressing free expression and that the officer's response was not excessive. It noted that the officer simply asked Bourne and the other women to put their shirts back on and did not ask them to "disband the group or bar their message."

By Pat Conroy. It was reported on this day that a student group is vowing to sue the Kanawha County Board of Education if the removal of Beach Music and The Prince of Tides from two Nitro High School classes is made permanent and expanded countywide. This incident was launched when parents Ken and Leona Tyree found certain scenes in The Prince of Tides "obscene and offensive", and parent Karen Frazier, who complained about violence in Beach Music. George Washington student Makenzie Hatfield, teamed up with her Advanced Placement English classmates and Nitro students to form a coalition against censorship in the face of a school board meeting scheduled for this day. On the agenda was whether the books should be removed from the curriculum, and the issue of banning the books countywide.

Some of the people involved have commented:

• Karen Frazier: "If a teacher was on a computer and sending this filth to underage students, they'd probably be arrested,"

• Jeremy Dys, executive director of the West Virginia Values Coalition: "Parents have the right to object to educational material that offends their moral underpinnings."

• Terri Baur, interim director of the state chapter of the ACLU: "Parents may have a fundamental right to send their child to a public school, but they don't have a fundamental right to direct the way public schools teach their child. Think about the implications of this. Are they going to pull a math textbook because a parent doesn't like the way multiplication is being taught?"

• Steve Shamblin, who teaches the honors English class for juniors and the Advanced Placement literature course for seniors at Nitro High School: "As long as we stay in a 1950s utopian mind-set, we're not going to get past the 20th century."

• Makenzie Hatfield: "[T]his is a college class. We chose to take this class. The school didn't tell us to. We chose."

• Author Pat Conroy, in an e-mail to the student group:
  • "every kid in that county will read them, every single one of them. Because book banners are invariably idiots. They don't know how the world works -- but writers and English teachers do."
  • [they are] "two of my darlings, which I would place before the altar of God and say, 'Lord, this is how I found the world you made.'"

By Arno Herwerth. See the entry on the Vanity Plates page.

By the Massachusetts Department of Education. In a statement released on this day the department acknowledged having violated the free-speech rights of a standardized-test critic Alfie Kohn and agreed to pay 187,000 USD as part of a settlement. Mr. Kohn sued after he was prevented from speaking at a conference in 2001 in which he was scheduled to deliver a keynote address. He said state education officials violated his rights and deprived others from hearing his views when they pressured organizers to cancel his speech by threatening to withdraw $28,000 in state funding. In the settlement, Mr. Kohn will receive $7,500 and his attorneys will get $179,500

By the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In a commentary titled 5th Circuit extends limits on student speech, Douglas Lee examines a sliding down the slippery slope to increase derogations from the free speech rights of high school students. The court apparently applied some extremely tortured logic, and in rendering its decision, promoted the principle that it is better to presume that some classes of people are guilty until proven innocent. What is mind-bogglingly stupid about this decision is that when prosecutors investigated the suppose threat after the student was arreste, the found nothing indictable. The decision was rendered in a First Amendment law suit brought against the school by the student's parents.

[See my commentary on the issue of Frederick v: Morse. --MN]

By Philip Pullman and Scholastic respectively. Halton's Catholic board pulled The Golden Compass fantasy book off school library shelves because of a complaint, and also pulled the two other books in the trilogy as a precaution. Scott Millard, the board's manager of library services is quoted as saying: [The complaint] "came out of interviews that Philip Pullman had done, where he stated that he is an atheist and that he supports that. Since we are an educational institution, we want to be able to evaluate the material; we want to make sure we have the best material for students." This statement can only be seen as patently untrue by this editor, given that quality of writing and the level of innovation of an idea cannot be validated by the author's personal beliefs. Moverover, the district school principals have been ordered not to distribute December Scholastic book flyers because The Golden Compass can be ordered through the flyer. This means that: 1) the school district has accorded authority to itself over what private citizens are allowed to buy and read, because those materials must pass through a school's purlieu, even though they are not part of the curriculum; 2) those same citizens are prohibited from ordering every other title on the Dec book flyer.

By the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Frank Gagliardi had been convicted on one count of attempting to entice a child to engage in prohibited sexual activity; his lawyers based their defence on the idea that the law used to convict him required an actual child victim and that it was unconstitutionally vague and overbroad and impeded his free speech rights as a result. On this day, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that law enforcement officers investigating sexual predators can pose as children, saying that the First Amendment provides no refuge for such criminals. The court also rejected the argument that the law "impermissibly suppresses fantasy speech with adults who happen to be posing as minors", having already concluded in previous cases that speech is not protected when it is the "very vehicle of the crime itself."

Mr. Gagliardi was arrested by FBI agents on 05 Oct 2005, as he waited in his car in the belief he was to meet two 13-year-old girls with whom he'd had sexually explicit chatroom conversations; it was reported that condoms and Viagra were found in his car. After his conviction he was sentenced to a mandatory minimum of five years in prison.

By U.S. District Judge James Brady. The city of Zachary, Louisiana, has been enjoined from enforcing the portion of an ordinance that makies it a crime to publicly direct "offensive, derisive or annoying words" at another person. Judge Brady granted an injunction in favor of John Todd Netherland who was threatened with arrest in Nov 2006 while preaching against drunkenness and fornication outside a Plank Road restaurant. The ruling, in Netherland v. City of Zachary, says the section of d isturbing-the-peace ordinance in question contains the words "annoying," "offensive" and "derisive," but does not clearly define what conduct is impermissible. Those terms "fail to provide objective, discernable meaning," the ruling says. Judge Brady further wrote: "Speech that is considered 'annoying' or 'offensive' varies by individual opinion. One wishing to go to a public place and speak cannot know what type of speech will be prohibited in Zachary, and the terms of the ordinance give way to arbitrary enforcement by police."

By The Committee to Protect Journalists. The organization said that its yearly census found the number of imprisoned journalists had dropped by only seven from 2066, but there was an increase in the proportion of journalists held without any charge: one in six have never been publicly charged. the committee's executive director, Joel Simon, commented on the situation: "Imprisoning journalists on the basis of assertions alone should not be confused with a legal process. This is nothing less than state-sponsored abduction. While we believe every one of these 127 journalists should be released, we are especially concerned for those detained without charge because they're often held in abysmal conditions, cut off from their lawyers and their families."

China continues to be the worst case of the twenty-four offenders with twenty-nine incarcerated reporters; almost a quarter of the total, at 23%, rounded up. The United States also contiues to be violator of press freedom:

• Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein has been held in Iraq for nearly 20 months by the U.S. armed forces;
• Al-Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Haj has been held as a terrorist at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for five years.

The number of imprisoned journalists is down from 134 from 2006, but still two above par from the 2005 number of 125.

By Buddy Holly Center. A cultural facility that pays tribute to the late rock 'n' roll star, it regularly displays various art forms in a forum called First Friday Art Trail; so called because it is held on the first Friday of every month. On this day, the city of Lubbock summarily, without any policy about what is prohibited, and reportedly without having seen the images, banned two drawings from the exhibit. The predominantly pencil-sketched images are of a nearly fully clothed mother who is breast-feeding, and of a nude, pregnant woman. Some areas of the sketchings are highligted with flesh tones. Scott Snider, Lubbock's assistant city manager for community services, is quoted as commenting: "The decision was consistent with the museum's recent practices." Ms. Lahib Jaddo, the artist being censored, said about the officials not having seen the images: "We know he didn't because (the decision) was made over the phone." Aside from this, Ms. Jaddo has shown other pieces featuring nudity on a number of occassion without being censored.

The banning of the image of breast-feeding is nonsensical in light of a 1995 law that entitles a mother to breast-feed her baby anywhere the mother is authorized to be. The breasts and genitalia of the pregnant woman are reported to be visible. Apparently, this incident is seen as being unlikely to bring about the adoption of written guidelines.

By Ellen Wittlinger. The Tuscaloosa County school board grudgingly conceded that Sandpiper must remain in the Brookwood High School library on legal grounds; despite a teen's protest against it and the board's own dislike for its material about oral sex. Brett Whitehead, the school board president, read from a statement at the board meeting held on this day:

"Let it be clear, this board does not approve of the graphic language used by the author in this book. We strongly feel the author could have chosen more appropriate language to establish the underlying theme of a book that seems obviously directed at young teenage school children."

"It disappoints us that the decisions of the courts have taken away this local Board of Education's ability to make decisions that protect these very same school children. Based upon legal counsel, we therefore have reluctantly decided to take no action."

According to the American Library Association, this incident marks the first time that Sandpiper has been challenged.
(see 31 Oct 2007)

By PEN American Center, PEN Canada, and the Independent Chinese PEN Center. These are three of the one hundred forty-five worldwide centers of International PEN, an organization that works to promote friendship and intellectual co-operation among writers everywhere, to fight for freedom of expression, and to represent the conscience of world literature. On this day they launched this Olympic countdown campaign to protest the imprisonment, by the government of China, of at least thirty-eight writers and journalists, and to seek an end to internet censorship and other restrictions on the freedom to write in that country.

By Dawn Herb. On this day, District Judge Terrence Gallagher dismissed the disorderly conduct charge against Ms. Herb, ruling that it was within her free speech rights to let loose with a string of profanities at her overflowing toilet. In Pennsylvania, someone can be convicted of disorderly conduct for using vulgar language in a way that causes "public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm." However, Barry Dyller, who represented Ms. Herb on behalf of the ACLU, commented that rulings over the past 20 years have established that "colorful language" is not illegal.
(see 11 Oct 2007)

By the Arkansas State Police. On 10 Dec, Bill Lawson went to the scene of a chimney fire on behalf of his employer, the Maumelle Monitor weekly newspaper. At the scene, he encountered State Trooper Thomas Weindruch, who detained him, prevented him from effecting coverage of the news event, and wrote a ticket accusing Lawson of misdemeanor obstruction of governmental operations. On this day, the citation was dismissed by Sherwood District Judge Butch Hale, at the request of Pulaski County Prosecutor Larry Jegley, and it was announced that disciplinary action was being taken against Trooper Weindruch.

Prosecutor Jegley told Stephens Media, the owner of the Maumelle Monitor: "After we reviewed the incident report and the videotape [from the patrol car camera] and looked at the relevant statute, we didn't feel as though the charge was appropriate, given what we read and saw." A state police news release on this day stated that Colonel Winford Phillips, the agency director, had ordered Trooper Weindruch not to wear his department uniform, "nor should he make any attempt to act in the capacity of a law enforcement officer." According to the press release the reassignment will last for the duration of an internal affairs investigation into Mr. Lawson's complaint that the trooper had exhibited inappropriate and hostile behavior.

By MySpace. Web journaler Violet Blue posted an entry to her blog on this day complaining about expurgated e-mails and redirected links:

This is no joke. MySpace is now quietly screening and censoring users' emails for sexual language -- and I'm sure other things as well, if they're editing out phrases as innocuous as "sex toys." I wonder what else MySpace is looking for in users' emails. But if that's not a total violation of private communication between adults, they're also combing for outgoing links on members' pages, making judgment calls, and replacing links they don't approve of with URLs back to the MySpace home page. Silent accusers, silent judges, forced sentence and no chance for appeal. The people mentioned below are photographers and filmmakers, not pornographers or performers. My dear friend Steve Diet Goedde blogs,

Yesterday I had written to a friend on Myspace, and I had to use the words "sex toys" in order to describe what the Stockroom sold. When they received the email, Myspace had replaced "sex toys" with ### ####. And then this morning, my photographer buddy Geoff Cordner informed me that Myspace had removed all links to his site from his Myspace profile. I tried it on my profile, and sure enough, all links to my site now direct to the Myspace home page. Umm, I think we're living in China now.

One of her readers did suggest a possible scenario to explain the link redirections:

For whatever groan-inducing reason, I think this is something they're doing to links across the board, regardless of content. My links were to my Flickr, Blogger, etc., none of which are particularly "adult" themed. Their thinking must be something along the lines of, "We can't have all these links to the Outside. People won't be looking at our ad banners if they're constantly clicking away from us." Something just as simple and stupid as that.

This does not explain the policing of MySpace e-mail, however.

By Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon. For cranking out the most unethical / sycophantic / propagandist / spinmeister / echo chamber / misrepresentative, claptrap non-news and in some cases outright lies, the following have been tagged for this stinky journalism award.

1. Michael Gordon of The New York Times
2. Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC's "Hardball"
3. Jeff Greenfield of CBS, et al.
4. Too Many [political reporters] to Name
5. L.A. Times, Washington Post
6. ABC, CNN, Fox, CBS and others
7. New York Times
8. CNN's Lou Dobbs
9. Bill O'Reilly of Fox News
10. Newsweek

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: