Tag: Free speech

  • You don’t believe unless

    A philosophical aphorism seen on Twitter…

    You don’t believe in freedom of speech unless you believe in freedom for speech that you consider ugly, offensive, deplorable, dangerous…

    What?

    The first three adjectives are standard fare, and reasonable, and so on. But the last one? That’s a whole different category, and it’s far from obviously true. Depending on how “dangerous” we’re talking about, it’s not true at all.

    There have been many examples in very recent history of speech used to foment hatred of outgroups with a view to getting rid of said outgroups, and the result was “ethnic cleansing” aka genocide.

    No, I don’t believe in freedom for speech that’s dangerous in that way, and no that doesn’t mean I don’t “believe in freedom of speech.”

    But then I’m not sure I “believe in” the need for swearing a loyalty oath to freedom speech. I get the principle, and I basically agree with it, but I also don’t think it’s an absolute, and I think one does need to consider particulars.

  • Not simple

    Update: this probably needs a trigger warning. It is indeed very upsetting.

    Speaking of girls, and bullying, and sexualization, and bullying, and name-calling, and bullying…

    A girl in Coquitlam, BC, couldn’t wait for it to get better, and killed herself on Wednesday. She left a video telling the story.

    “In 7th grade I would go with friends on webcam,” the card in the teen’s hand read.

    The next few cards reveal that the teen began to get attention on the Internet from people that she did not know. People who told her she was beautiful, stunning, perfect.

    “They wanted me to flash. So I did one year later,” the cards said.

    The teen then got a message on Facebook from a stranger who said she needed to show more of herself or he would publish the topless pictures he had taken of her.

    “He knew my address, school, relatives, friends, family, names …”

    And it went on from there. Anxiety, depression, withdrawal, self-cutting. Bullying. More and more and more bullying. So she killed herself.

    The weird thing about this (weird to me) is that I saw it via a tweet by Al Stefanelli, a tweet which was (kind of) aimed at me, in the sense that it quoted something I’d said on his (new-old) blog. I said it as a comment on his post Free Speech, Being Offended and the Role the Internet Plays in the Exchange of Ideas, which (I think) makes the whole thing much too simple.

    For fuck’s sake, if something is being said about you or about a subject that you are sensitive to on the Internet in a way that is going to cause you extreme duress, stress you out, or trigger a reaction that will cause you to have a psychological breakdown, the stay the hell away from those spaces. Really, it’s that simple.

    No, really, it isn’t. So I commented to that effect. (It wasn’t meant as a hostile gesture. On the contrary, it was meant as a conciliatory one – a maybe we can still keep the conversation going despite your sudden departure gesture.)

    But it isn’t that simple. Suppose what is being said about you is both false and defamatory? Suppose it could do you real-world damage? Then just staying the hell away isn’t really a solution, is it.

    So you’re over-simplifying, Al. Quite drastically. It’s just not the case that the only harm ever done by any kind of speech including written speech is that it “offends” someone.

    Al’s tweet a couple of hours later said

    THIS is what ‘real-world damage’ from digital bullying looks like: Teen leaves behind chilling YouTube video

    Quoting me, see. But it’s odd, because that’s what I was saying.  Just staying the hell away isn’t always really a solution.

    Anyway…the gesture didn’t work, to say the least. Al is angrier than I’d realized. I frankly don’t know why. But the point remains – no, it’s not that simple. This subject isn’t simple.

     

  • Doin it rong

    A guy from Greater Manchester, Barry Thew, wore a horrible T shirt right after two police constables, Fiona Bone and Nicola Hughes, were killed. The T shirt said “one less pig perfect justice.” Nasty.

    He was sentenced to four months in jail today. He “admitted a public order offence.”

    A police spokesman said Thew, of Worsley Street, Radcliffe, had been arrested after being seen wearing the T-shirt in Radcliffe town centre “just hours” after the constables died in a gun and grenade attack in Mottram on 18 September.

    Mr Williams said: “While officers on the ground were just learning of and trying to come to terms with the devastating news that two colleagues had been killed, Thew thought nothing of going out in public with a shirt daubed with appalling handwritten comments on.”

    That’s very very unkind and unfeeling and rude. Barry Thew shouldn’t be like that. But – being unkind isn’t a crime. All his friends should give him a good talking-to, but he shouldn’t be convicted of a crime or sent to jail.

    It’s a T shirt. With a handwritten slogan on it.

     

  • He will be sentenced later

    No no no; doing it wrong. A Yorkshire teenager has been found guilty of “posting an offensive Facebook message.” Posting an offensive Facebook message is a crime?

    Azhar Ahmed, 19, of Ravensthorpe, West Yorkshire, was charged with sending a grossly offensive communication.

    Waaaaait a second – posting a message on Facebook isn’t “sending” it. It’s more like publishing it. And does adding “grossly” to “offensive” make it a crime?

    Apparently it was considered so because it was posted two days after six British soldiers were killed in Afghanistan.

    The offensive message, which said “all soldiers should die and go to hell”, was posted by Ahmed just two days later on 8 March.

    ……….And?

    Facebook has a reporting system. Perhaps the message could have been taken down. Perhaps it should have been – I don’t know enough to have an opinion. But prosecution and conviction? For posting a message on Facebook?

    District Judge Jane Goodwin said Ahmed’s Facebook remarks were “derogatory, disrespectful and inflammatory”.

    He will be sentenced later.

    Oy. Doing it wrong.

     

  • “Satan’s representative” on the Michigan Student Assembly

    More detail on the Andrew Shirvell case, because CNN has more.

    Shirvell was fired from his job in the attorney general’s office in 2010 after targeting the student leader online and in person — then lying about his actions to investigators, state Attorney General Mike Cox said at the time.

    Shirvell “repeatedly violated office policies, engaged in borderline stalking behavior and inappropriately used state resources,” Cox said, referring to Shirvell’s activities during his work day.

    Asked for specifics about Shirvell’s conduct, Armstrong lawyer Gordon said, “He said (Armstrong) had an orgy in a dorm room and sex in a park and that he had liquored up underage freshmen to recruit them to the ‘homosexual lifestyle.’”

    Shirvell also referred to Armstrong as “Satan’s representative” on the Michigan Student Assembly, she said.

    Why? All out of sheer hatred of gayitude because god?

    Shirvell, himself a University of Michigan alumnus, told CNN that he is “100% confident that the verdict will be overturned on appeal.”

    “I think the jury award is grossly excessive,” he said. “It’s absolutely outrageous. The jury’s verdict was a complete trampling of my First Amendment rights.”

    His First Amendment rights to defame someone? Ain’t no such.

     He told CNN in 2010 that Armstrong “is a radical homosexual activist who got elected … to promote a very deep, radical agenda at the University of Michigan.”

    Uh huh – the same way I have a deep, crazed, radical agenda to convince people that relentless contempt for women is not a good thing for human flourishing.

    Gordon [Armstrong’s lawyer] said that Shirvell’s claim is without merit. “It’s really simple,” she said. “Defamation refers to statements that are false that you say about another person. If you say my neighbor is having sex in a park with children, which is literally kind of what he said here, that is defamation. That is not First Amendment-protected. It’s not opinion. It’s provable as false. You can be held responsible financially.

    “He wants to put all his crap — which is nothing but a bunch of fabricated lies — under the umbrella of the First Amendment. Shame on him.”

    Especially since he was once an assistant attorney general.

     

     

  • Insulting Islamic values in Twitter messages

    Another entry in the annals of Persecuting and Prosecuting People For Having an Opinion That Reactonaries Dislike.

    A court here on Friday charged Fazil Say, a classical and jazz pianist with an international career, with insulting Islamic values in Twitter messages, the latest in a series of legal actions against Turkish artists, writers and intellectuals for statements they have made about religion and Turkish national identity.

    Mr. Say, 42, who is also a composer, is accused of “publicly insulting religious values that are adopted by a part of the nation,” the semiofficial Anatolian news agency said. A trial is scheduled to begin on Oct. 18, with Mr. Say facing up to 18 months in prison if convicted.

    Charged with insulting Islamic values – there it is again – that bone-headed idea that nonsentient nonconscious nonalive abstractions like “values” can be “insulted” and that “insulting” them is a serious crime. An idea so bone-headed and so primitive that it’s as if the very concept of free speech and inquiry had never been formulated. An idea that, enshrined in law, would seem to make any kind of public discussion and investigation and forward motion impossible. An idea that belongs in a frozen static stonelike thoughtworld, where “yes” is the only word in the language.

    And all this over tweets, for fuck’s sake.

    It is unusual for Twitter posts to be the subject of an indictment in Turkey. Some of the messages were written by Mr. Say, but one, which poked fun at an Islamic vision of the afterlife, was written by someone else and passed along by Mr. Say via his Twitter account. Likening heaven’s promise of rivers of wine to a tavern and of virgins to a brothel, it referred to a poem by the 11th-century Persian poet Omar Khayyam, Mr. Say said in a text message from Slovenia, where he had just arrived for a concert.

    Retweeted, in other words. It’s faintly risible that the Times thinks it has to spell that out, but it’s also faintly risible that adults spend their time tweeting and retweeting – and yet we do. It’s an odd world we live in.

    But anyway, the point is, he’s being prosecuted partly for retweeting something. For retweeting something. People often retweet things because they’re so stupid or wrong or nasty; it’s not always an endorsement! It’s certainly not law enforcement’s job to decide it is. (But in Turkey it is. I know. Turkey is wrong.)

    The pianist, who has frequently criticized the pro-Islamic Justice and Development Party government over its cultural and social policies, publicly defines himself as an atheist — a controversial admission in Turkey, which is overwhelmingly Muslim.

    And bossy. Incredibly, searchingly bossy.

     Many intellectuals and writers have faced similar charges in recent years, including Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel laureate, who last year was fined $3,700 for saying in a Swiss newspaper that Turks “have killed 30,000 Kurds and 1 million Armenians.”

    The European Union, which Turkey is seeking to join, and other international organizations have criticized such actions as violations of free speech.

    Little bit.

     

  • Measuring the distance

    Another free speech issue, a tricky one.

    France has barred a group of Muslim clerics, including one of the most prominent voices in Sunni Islam, from entering the country to attend a conference.

    France’s foreign ministry said Thursday the clerics were invited by the French Islamic Union to speak at a congress in Le Bourget near Paris from April 6-9.

    One of those barred, the Egyptian-born Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, says he refuses to come to France.

    The ban also includes other high-profile Muslim clerics of Palestinian, Egyptian and Saudi origin.

    The foreign ministry said in a statement that “these people call for hatred and violence and seriously violate the principles of the Republic, and in the current context, seriously risk disrupting public order.”

    That’s the state banning a particular kind of speech, all right. Free speech liberals think the bar should be very very high for that. Is the bar high enough here?

    I don’t know. I suppose I think it’s not high enough as a matter of principle, but as a matter of reality, it may be. I don’t know how to think about it any more coherently than that. As a matter of principle, it seems as if people should be able to hold congresses and invite clerics to speak at them. As a matter of reality, misogynist anti-Semitic xenophobic homophobic clerics can be very dangerous. This insoluble conflict tends to make me despair.

     

  • A bargain

    It can seem strange how entirely alien the whole idea of free discussion can seem to people who (I suppose) have never had any experience of it.

    A Bangladesh court on Wednesday ordered authorities to shut down five Facebook pages and a website for blaspheming the Prophet Mohammed, the Koran and other religious subjects, a lawyer said.

    Judges at the high court in Dhaka ordered the telecommunications regulator, home ministry officials and police to block the offending pages immediately.

    “These pages contain disparaging remarks and cartoons about Prophet Mohammed, the Muslim holy book of Koran, Jesus, Lord Buddha and Hindu gods,” Nawshad Zamir, a lawyer of the petitioner who brought the case, told AFP.

    “They mostly targeted the prophet and the Koran. These pages hurt the sentiments of the country’s majority Muslim population and the followers of other religions.”

    One, no they don’t, not necessarily. It’s not as if “these pages” by existing force themselves on the notice of all people everywhere. Two…well it’s Minchin’s fucking obvious again, but ok: if that’s your standard then nobody can say anything about anything, including you. The prophet and the Koran “hurt” my “sentiments,” but I don’t get to block them. I get to make disparaging remarks about them, instead.

  • Atheists v Hasids

    American Atheists were going to give the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn a very nice atheist billboard. Dave Silverman says they get emails from atheists there who feel very alone; AA wanted to let them know they’re not alone.

     

    Silverman was at the site with the advertising company to erect the giant sign atop a residential building.

    But landlord Kenny Stier refused to allow workers from the advertising company Clear Channel into the building, said Silverman. He told The Brooklyn Paper that he believes powerful rabbis in the largely ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Jewish area persuaded Stier to block the billboard.

    “It has been very disconcerting to see that the traditional victims of religious bigotry have become the purveyors of religious bigotry,” said Silverman, who was raised in the Jewish faith.

    I’ve been reading Deborah Feldman’s Unorthodox; lots of religious bigotry there. Jesse Kornbluth reports that the Satmars (the branch of Hasid-ism [is that a word?] that Feldman was raised in, and left, and wrote a book about) have been needling him for writing a favorable review of the book. He also says they’ve been straining at a gnat while swallowing a camel.

    What’s fascinating to me in all this is that the Satmars only want to engage on the smallest points:, like where Feldman went to school and the technicalities of her mother’s divorce, I’ve received not a word of protest about the conclusion of my review, which was, I thought, the most damning:

    The real issue is sex. Not the act, but what it signifies — male control of women. That old story. We see it in far too many places; dehumanizing women is a key component of fundamentalist cults, from hardcore Muslims to certain Republicans.

    Men who oppress women — they say they love them, but it seems more like they fear and hate them — haven’t been taught that sex is our reward for making it through the day. Like their women, these men have been sold the idea that sex is just for procreation. No wonder they feel like they’re the ones who are oppressed.

    There are claims in this book that Hasids have disputed. I can’t tell what’s true. But I’m sure of one thing: Men who can’t live equally with women aren’t worth living with.

    Why didn’t the Satmars take me on about the blatant sexism that oppresses both women and men in their community?

    Because what could they say?

  • Nick Cohen on a culture that pretends to be brave

    At the Rally for Free Expression.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lffXO_LLWo

  • Those who are wanted by their countries of origin

    Malaysia today is defending its extradition of Hamza Kashgari back to Saudi Arabia where he could easily be executed for saying he has questions about Mohammed.

    International rights groups have slammed the deportation but Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said Malaysia was not a safe haven for fugitives.

    Jiddah-based newspaper columnist Hamza Kashgari, 23, was detained Thursday at the Malaysian airport while in transit to New Zealand. He was deported Sunday despite fears from rights groups that he may face the death penalty if charged with blasphemy over remarks he tweeted that many considered offensive.

    “I will not allow Malaysia to be seen as a safe country for terrorists and those who are wanted by their countries of origin, and also be seen as a transit county,” Hishammuddin said.

    “Those who are wanted by their countries of origin” is it. What if they are ”wanted” by their countries of origin for being gay? For being critical of their government? For leaving the religion of their parents? For marrying without the permission of their parents? For not wearing the hijab? For using an electrical switch on “the sabbath”? For laughing at the wrong moment? For not bowing low enough?

    Is there any reason too stupid, too vicious, too trivial, for a country to “want” people and Malaysia to obey that “want”?

    Probably not, given the profound triviality and viciousness and stupidity of Saudi Arabia’s reasons for “wanting” Kashgari.

    He said the deportation followed a request from the Saudi government. Allegations that Kashgari could be tortured and killed if he was sent back home are “ridiculous” because Saudi Arabia is a respectable country, he said.

    Oh is it. Is it really. Tell that to foreign domestic workers there. Tell it to people executed for “adultery.” Tell it to women arrested for driving cars. Tell it to convicts sentenced to having their hands and feet amputated. Tell it to everyone who has been hassled by the Mutawwa’in.

    Local rights group Lawyers for Liberty said Kashgari arrived in Malaysia on Feb. 7 from Jordan and was leaving the country two days later to New Zealand to seek asylum when he was detained.

    “The cold hard truth is that Malaysia has bent over backwards to please Saudi Arabia, breached international law by not allowing (Kashgari) to seek asylum and instead handed him on a silver platter to his persecutors,” it said.

    For shame, Malaysia.

  • Free Hamza Kashgari

    You know the drill – same old same old. Join this Facebook group. You know the media report it when causes get big support on Facebook, so join. I added a few people, because you can’t just invite any more – but I’m shy about adding because it seems so presumptuous, so if I neglected to add you, add yourself. And all your friends. Don’t be shy!

    And sign the petition.

    And say harsh things about Malaysia as well as Saudi Arabia.

  • At Maryam’s place

    Maryam’s post on the Free Expression Rally is up.

    So is her post on Malaysia’s outrageous deportation of Hamza Kashgari.

    Malaysia’s home ministry has said that ‘The nature of the charges against the individual in this case are a matter for the Saudi Arabian authorities’. Which basically means that any asylum seeker or refugee must be returned as it is a case for the government in question!?

    Maryam is kept very busy by all these attacks on our right to say what we think.

  • Tragic failure of education

    Via the LSESU ASH Facebook page and later via Alex Gabriel, a poster advertising an event put on by the LSE Socialist Worker Student Society. It reads:

    Religious discrimination is irrefutably on the rise at LSE. Both the Atheist Society’s efforts to publish inflammatory “satirical” cartoons in a deliberate attempt to offend Muslims, and the ‘Nazi themed’ drinking games serve to highlight a festering undercurrent of racism.

    What does really lie behind the claim that religious communities cannot be the target of racists?

    Is atheism the road to social progress?

    Why do Marxists defend religion?

    That’s illiterate. “Religious discrimination” is somehow related to Nazism, and then it turns out to be a matter of racism, but then whoops it’s back to religion again – and all the wheels fall off with a resounding clatter.

    But more to the point, notice the vicious language about the LSE ASH. Note the “efforts to publish” when the site of “publication” was the group’s Facebook page. Note the malevolent paranoia of “inflammatory.” Note above all the (one could say “inflammatory”) accusation that that was a “deliberate attempt to offend Muslims.” Note, in short, the frothing hatred of secularism, free speech and discussion, and failure to grovel before religious taboos.

    In the next paragraph, note the “religious communities,” which sweeps all Muslims into the group “invariably outraged by even the most anodyne criticism of or jokes about their religion.”

    Note it all, and hope they learn to think better soon.

  • “Open to all” does not mean “pleasing to all”

    The LSESU Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society issued a statement yesterday.

    It starts with thanks for support from various groups (including One Law for All) and a chronology of the exciting events of the last couple of weeks, the first being an invitation from the SU to come in for a chat.

    Friday 20th

    In the meeting, the LSESU advanced that we were not providing a safe space for Muslim students to interact, as the pictures on our Facebook page were offending Muslims.

    But again – why is an Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society expected to provide a safe space for Muslim students to interact? Why is that an issue? Are all student societies expected to provide a safe space for their own opposites to interact? Wouldn’t such an expectation render all student societies utterly meaningless and void? Or is it only the Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society that is expected to do that? But in that case…why the fuck?

    On the 25th the SU clarified this point somewhat:

    When activity comes under the banner of the Student’s Union it should be open to all members…….. The images which are posted there present a clear barrier to entry for a large number of students at LSE……. the cartoons has caused not only reflects negatively on the LSE SU brand but more importantly has caused significance offence to our members.

    So there we have the fundamental confusion: the confusion of being open with having no “barriers” when barriers are understood as “anything some students might dislike.” The activity is open to all members, but that doesn’t require it to be attractive to all members. At that rate there could be no musical society, because some people dislike music; there could be no socialist society, because socialism would “present a clear barrier” to free-market libertarians; there could be no feminist society, for reasons which there’s no need to spell out.

    ASH made the same point crisply in response to the SU:

    Disagreeing and even being offended by some of the contents of a social space do not represent a barrier to entry.

    It must be dispiriting to be at university with people who have to be told that.

    January 30th

    We asked the SU to “cite the relevant literature that shows conclusively that “Muslim students cannot look at pictures of the prophet Muhammad”.” No answers received.

    The LSESU Socialist Workers Society posted the posters on campus that included the following statement:

    “The Atheist Society’s efforts to publish inflammatory “satirical” cartoons in a deliberate attempt to offend Muslims serve to highlight a festering undercurrent of racism.”

    Budding George Galloways, all of them.

    …we have now changed the name of the Facebook group back to “LSESU Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society”.

    During the two weeks of the on-going investigation, the LSESU has not been able to justify their request to remove the ‘Jesus and Mo’ cartoons from our website and their request to change the name of our Facebook group with reference to the LSESU constitution or bye-laws.

    The SU answered our letter, but was still unable to state explicitly the effective and binding bye-laws on which their request has been based. Therefore, we are back to our old name, and will stay with our name until the SU can prove to us that we are in violation of any of their regulations or bye-laws.

    We await further developments.

     

  • Why a book about censorship?

    The Economist talked to Nick Cohen about his new book, aptly titled You Can’t Read This Book.

    First question was

    What made you want to write a book about censorship?

    Now what do you suppose he said.

    Firstly, it was watching a Russian oligarch with a criminal record using the libel law in Britain to silence all newspapers that wrote articles about him. Secondly, a great feminist writer, Ophelia Benson, co-wrote a book called “Does God Hate Women?” which was denounced overwhelmingly by the liberal press in Britain, including the paper I write for, the Observer. So once you start with an idea, the logic of the book then takes over.

    That’s not bad. Almost worth having one’s book overwhelmingly denounced by the liberal press.

    It was you know. I went over it all at the time, naturally, but not everyone who is reading now was reading then, so just by way of a reminder or a quick background – that’s exactly what happened. The Independent denounced it, the Observer denounced it, the Guardian’s ‘Comment is Free’ denounced it. BBC 3′s Night Waves invited not one but two defenders of religion to tell me how wrong we were and how feminist Islam and Catholicism are. One of the best and least mendacious reviews the book got was in – wait for it – the Church Times. Seriously.

  • Taslima’s readers and fans

    Taslima Nasreen has a lot of tweets about the cancellation of (or move outside of) her book launch in Kolkata. News media have been quoting her tweets, so I might as well do a few too. (How nice it would be if she had a blog.) She is getting plenty of support. The bullies don’t have a monopoly, by any means.

    Wow! Veiled girls buying & reading my books. I hope they would soon remove their veils & start living w dignity.

    Dhaka: Eminent writer Syed Abul Maksud holds Taslima Nasreen’s autobigraphy books ‘Nirbasan’ at Ekushe Boimela.

    pic.twitter.com/vSE6Ou52

    One from twelve hours ago:

    Dhaka Book Fair in Muslim Majority Bangladesh now successfully launched my book. Kolkata Book Fair in Muslim minority India could not.

  • More publications that will uphold love for truth

    Now it’s Taslima Nasreen’s turn.

    Taslima Nasreen has faced protests at the launch of her latest memoir, with an event at the Calcutta Book Fair cancelled. Ms Nasreen is not at the event, and tweeted that her publisher was forced to launch the book outside the hall.

    It would be nice if she had a blog. Twitter is all very well, but a blog gives a person room to move. I do think Taslima Nasreen should have a blog.

    The protest comes in the wake of an intensified debate over artistic free speech in India. UK writer Sir Salman Rushdie recently had to abandon plans to attend a literary festival in Jaipur amid security concerns. On Sunday an artist was assaulted in a gallery in Delhi, where he is exhibiting a number of nude paintings.

    And don’t forget Aseem Trivedi.

    Ms Nasreen was launching Nirbasan (Exile), the latest instalment of her memoirs that gives an account of her flight from Calcutta in 2007-08…Ms Nasreen has written dozens of books of poetry, essays, novels and short stories in her native Bengali language, mostly in exile. Her most controversial book, Lajja (Shame), was banned in Bangladesh and she fled after Muslim extremists called for her death. The publisher of the latest instalment, Shibani Mukherji, told the Press Trust of India it was “determined to go ahead with more publications that will uphold values, love for truth and social progress”.

    Props to Shibani Mukherji!

    Now if only Taslima Nasreen had a blog…

  • Treason and offending

    How not to understand free speech.

    The case of a cartoonist charged with treason and offending India’s national sentiments reflects a growing debate over what constitutes freedom of expression in India. His accusers argue that while it is permissible to make fun of politicians, you cannot make fun of the state.

    That’s how, right there. No no no, that’s entirely wrong. Yes you can make fun of the state. The state and the church or mosque are right at the top of the list of things you must be able to make fun of in order to have free speech at all. If free speech applies just to things that don’t matter, then it’s not free.

    Aseem Trivedi, a 25-year-old political cartoonist, was charged with treason and insulting the Indian national emblems, according to local news reports and CPJ interviews…

    Trivedi, a freelancer from the central state of Uttar Pradesh, was inspired by the well-known social activist Anna Hazare‘s fight against corruption and graft. Trivedi drew cartoons criticizing the Indian government, some of which were exhibited while Hazare was fasting in Mumbai in December.

    Back in Mumbai, Trivedi faces another legal attack. There, lawyer R.P. Pandey has filed his own complaint, alleging that the cartoons are “defamatory and derogatory” and requesting “strict legal action,” according to news reports. While Mumbai police have yet to file charges, the complaint has had repercussions: Big Rock, a domain name registrar, suspended Trivedi’s website, www.cartoonistsagainstcorruption.com, citing the criminal complaint, The Times of India reported.

    Speaking to CPJ from Mumbai, Pandey said that while parodying politicians was a legitimate pursuit, mocking national institutions like the Indian Parliament and national symbols was “completely unacceptable.”

    No no no. You can mock institutions. Mocking institutions is a very important component of free speech.

    Certainly, the blocking of Trivedi’s website has caused a sense of disquiet. Sudhir Tailang, a well-known political cartoonist based in Delhi, says, “The very essence of cartoons are their anti-establishment note. Take away that and you take away dissent.”

    Exactly. Do better, India.

     

     

  • Richard, Nick, Salman, Ayaan

    Richard Dawkins has a response to “Froborr.”

    Ok I’m lying, he doesn’t really, but it might as well be. Plus it’s a response to all the “oh won’t you please think of the poor fragile believers?” wails that keep being wailed.

    Actually he’s talking specifically about the Jaipur Festival (where he was one of the speakers) and Salman Rushdie and Nick Cohen’s new book – but he’s also talking generally, as is only natural, since all of those items have wide implications.

    I have just returned from the Jaipur Literary Festival, infamous for the recent reprise of the 1989 threats against Sir Salman Rushdie by Muslims the world over, lamentably applauded by leading churchmen, politicians, historians and otherwise liberal journalists. Coincidentally, I am reading You Can’t Read this Book, Nick Cohen’s brilliant broadside against ‘censorship in an age of freedom’.

    I’ve already read Nick’s book, because I read it as it was being written. I’ll be reading it again though. Anyway the point is, the subject of Nick’s book keeps being re-enacted, more absurdly and invasively and threateningly all the time.

    Richard said at Jaipur:

    Our whole society is soft on religion. The assumption is remarkably widespread that religious sensitivities are somehow especially deserving of consideration – a consideration not accorded to ordinary prejudice. . . I admit to being offended by Father Christmas, ‘Baby Jesus’, and Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer, but if I tried to act on these prejudices I’d quite rightly be held accountable. I’d be challenged to justify myself. But let somebody’s religion be offended and it’s another matter entirely. Not only do the affronted themselves kick up an almighty fuss; they are abetted and encouraged by influential figures from other religions and the liberal establishment. Far from being challenged to justify their beliefs like anybody else, the religious are granted sanctuary in a sort of intellectual no go area.

    Froborr take a bow.

    Richard quotes Nick on the new atheists:

    The new atheists thought that the best argument against Islamist terror, or Christian fundamentalism, or Hindu or Jewish nationalism, was to say bluntly that there is no God, and we should grow up. Fear of religious violence also drove the backlash against atheism from those who felt that appeasement of psychopathic believers was the safest policy; that if we were nice to them, perhaps they would calm down. Prim mainstream commentators decried the insensitivity and downright rudeness with which the new atheists treated the religious. The complaints boiled down to a simple and piteous cry: “Why can’t you stop upsetting them?”

    The answer is simple. If the criterion for what is allowable in public discourse becomes “that which will not upset anyone” then public discourse will be a vast desert of nothingness. We can’t have thought or inspiration or development or change without the risk of upsetting some people. “Not upsetting” is simply the wrong criterion for permissible discourse.