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Is our funding being used correctly?

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The United States is playing a game of "cat and mouse" on the web, funding new technology aimed at breaking internet censorship in repressive regimes including China and Iran, officials have said.

Michael Posner, the US assistant secretary of state for human rights, said projects being funded by the US government included technology that acts as a "slingshot" - identifying censored material and throwing it back on to the web for users to find. The project is part of a $30m (£18m) state department project to encourage civil liberty online.

"We're responding with new tools. This is a cat-and-mouse game. We're trying to stay one step ahead of the cat," Posner said. Censored information would be redirected to email, blogs and other online sources, he said. He would not identify the recipients of funding for "reasons of security".

The comments are part of an overall US strategy to raise the importance of cyberspace in foreign affairs. The Pentagon is preparing to unveil an "international strategy for cyberspace" that will make online security an official domain of warfare like land, sea and air.

The comments came as the US ended two days of talks with Chinese officials amid worsening relations over censorship and crackdowns on dissidents. Posner said the US was using $19m to fund technology that would "be redirecting information back in that governments have initially blocked".

Chinese authorities block sites including Twitter and Facebook and censor information online. In March, Google accused China of interfering with its email service. Authorities have been censoring references to pro-democracy uprisings in the Arab world and blocked search results for "Hillary Clinton" after she gave a speech championing internet freedom.

Posner said the US was using $19m to fund technology that would "be redirecting information back in that governments have initially blocked.".

In Washington, critics have accused the state department of being slow to spend the money and kowtowing to China. Earlier this year senator Dick Lugar, a Republican on the Senate foreign relations committee, called for another government body to be put in charge of the funds.

Rebecca MacKinnon, co-founder of GlobalVoicesOnline.org, a global organisation for bloggers, said access to information was not the only issue people faced online. In Egypt, for example, censorship had not been a problem but, surveillance had been a far bigger issue, she said - when the revolution began, the authorities closed down the internet. MacKinnon said technology to help people avoid government scrutiny online and allow them to set up local networks should a regime pull the plug on internet access was just as valuable.

In a recent interview with the Atlantic magazine, Clinton said China had a deplorable human rights record and was involved in a "fool's errand" trying to hold off democratic changes like those sweeping the Middle East.

In her speech in February, the US secretary of state called the internet "the public space of the 21st century" and hailed the way it had been used to support uprisings in Egypt and protests in Iran. She pledged US support for freedom of expression and association online. "For the United States, the choice is clear. On the spectrum of internet freedom, we place ourselves on the side of openness," she said. But she criticised WikiLeaks for publishing secret US cables, calling it "an act of theft".

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US to spend $30m fighting internet censorship

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The United States is playing a game of "cat and mouse" on the web, funding new technology aimed at breaking internet censorship in repressive regimes including China and Iran, officials have said.

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Colin Kaepernick is exercising his right to freedom of speech even with the backlash of viewers, he still permitted to take action.

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Colin Kaepernick Takes a Knee for National Anthem

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At a school-supervised event, Joseph Frederick held up a banner with the message "Bong Hits 4 Jesus," a slang reference to marijuana smoking. Principal Deborah Morse took away the banner and suspended Frederick for ten days. She justified her actions by citing the school's policy against the display of material that promotes the use of illegal drugs. Frederick sued under 42 U.S.C. 1983, the federal civil rights statute, alleging a violation of his First Amendment right to freedom of speech. The District Court found no constitutional violation and ruled in favor of Morse. The court held that even if there were a violation, the principal had qualified immunity from lawsuit. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed. The Ninth Circuit cited Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District , which extended First Amendment protection to student speech except where the speech would cause a disturbance. Because Frederick was punished for his message rather than for any disturbance, the Circuit Court ruled, the punishment was unconstitutional. Furthermore, the principal had no qualified immunity, because any reasonable principal would have known that Morse's actions were unlawful.

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Many question the full extent of the first amendment. What is crossing the line, or simply where is the line? Is the freedom of speech concrete? It is simply untrue. The following are forms of speech that is not allowed:

Obscenity

Fighting words

Defamation (including libel and slander)

Child pornography

Perjury

Blackmail

Incitement to imminent lawless action

True threats

Solicitations to commit crimes

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Listen to Emma Teitel read her column, or subscribe to Maclean's Voices on iTunes or Stitcher for on-the-go listening:

If you Google "common misconceptions," you're likely to see one of the following corrections: Napoleon wasn't actually very short, Marie Antoinette did not say "Let them eat cake," J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books did not inspire the most voracious reading generation in history, and Mozart did not write Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. (It turns out, he only wrote variations on the original tune.) But what you're unlikely to see on such a list is a fallacy far more popular than any involving Harry Potter or French royalty-a fallacy that's a catalyst for boycotts and political protests of every stripe. That fallacy is the notion that free speech is absolute. It is the belief that freedom of expression does not mean freedom to speak your mind without government interference, but freedom to speak your mind without any interference at all.

When New York rapper Action Bronson's scheduled public performance at this month's North by Northeast music festival in Toronto was cancelled on account of his explicit lyrics-some of which feminists believe glorify rape-fans of the rapper were under the impression that a great injustice had taken place. (More than 40,000 people signed a petition asking the festival to cancel Bronson's performance at Yonge-Dundas Square in the city's centre; many suggested the performance be moved to a private venue.) What Bronson's forlorn fans fail to grasp, however, is that while it may be annoying that some people would rather loudly boycott an event than simply quietly not attend, NXNE, a music festival with a reputation to uphold and sponsors to appease, is in no way obligated to allow Action Bronson to shout violent obscenities in the public square.

In fact, nobody is obligated to let another person do so-not even the government, if what that person is saying constitutes hate speech. But a misconception about freedom of speech persists in our culture, and nowhere is this misconception more prevalent than on the Internet. Case in point: Reddit, often referred to as the "bulletin board" of social media websites, shut down a group of popular, highly offensive sub-reddits (conversation threads) this month, because the site's interim CEO, Ellen Pao, was trying to eliminate harassment on the site. Of course, thousands of Reddit users revolted-branding Pao a servant to political correctness and a dictator. The most popular banned sub-reddit in question, "Fat people hate," dedicated to humiliating and disparaging overweight people, had 150,000 subscribers. Pao's reasons for dismantling the offensive sub-reddits weren't, she argued, ideologically driven. Thousands of racist and homophobic sub-reddits are still in operation on the website; Pao says she eliminated only a handful of them, because they had unique reputations for harassing behaviour that extended beyond the Internet and into the real world. But many users believe Pao's decision is hypocritical and directly tied to her personal political beliefs. Pao is, in British journalist and pundit Milo Yiannopoulos's view, a product of "politically correct Silicon Valley culture." Yiannopoulos understands that freedom of speech laws generally deal with government silencing, but he believes people should take silencing on social media far more seriously.

"Private corporations like Twitter and 4Chan have a significant and chilling effect on speech and discourse in the public square when they shut down discussion."

Yiannopoulos is right. But his point doesn't negate the fact that corporations are not governments in the business of protecting fundamental freedoms. They are in the business of turning a profit, something they can't do with shoddy reputations.

Arthur Chu, the 11-time Jeopardy champion and columnist who writes frequently on tech issues, sees similarities between Pao's shutting down of offensive sub-reddits and the way traditional media outlets edit their reader feedback. "Print newspapers never felt obligated to print every single profane note someone sent them in the mail," he says. "Quite the opposite: Letters sections were very heavily edited, and no one called that censorship." Editing the letters sections, he argues, is necessary, if you want to publish a "readable, responsible newspaper, so why do we think enabling the scrawling of graffiti all over the bathroom wall is now somehow a matter of constitutional principle?"

Perhaps it's liberating to believe that, no matter our political leanings and prejudices, there's a place we can say whatever we please, without consequence.

But that place never existed. Even in the Internet age, most of us express ourselves in public squares that are ultimately private spaces, run by corporations.

Those spaces have bottom lines. And lines in the sand.

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Here's the thing about free speech: It's not absolute.

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Listen to Emma Teitel read her column, or subscribe to Maclean's Voices on iTunes or Stitcher for on-the-go listening: If you Google "common misconceptions," you're likely to see one of the following corrections: Napoleon wasn't actually very short, Marie Antoinette did not say "Let them eat cake," J.K.

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Two time Oscar winner takes the time to acknowledge the Committee of Protected Journalists because of the recent slews from our president. She promotes the free press in her speech.

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Meryl Streep's rebuke of Donald Trump at the Golden Globes had a predictable outcome. It was widely lauded by Hollywood stars and prompted a Twitter tirade from the President-elect.

However there was an altogether more unexpected consequence. The emotionally charged acceptance speech for a lifetime achievement award, in which Streep attacked the billionaire developer for imitating a disabled reporter, has triggered a slew of donations to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

In her call to action, Streep urged the Hollywood community to support the organisation which promotes press freedom and defends the rights of journalists.

"So I only ask the famously well-heeled Hollywood Foreign Press and all of us in our community to join me in supporting the Committee to Protect Journalists," Streep said as she accepted the Cecil B DeMille award on Sunday night. "Because we're gonna need them going forward, and they'll need us to safeguard the truth."

The head of the Committee to Protect Journalists, Joel Simon, has said the organisation received 500 new donations overnight and a couple hundred more over the course of Monday.

"They continue to come in and it's mostly average people based on the size of the donation, so that's really encouraging. Obviously, separately, it's just enormous visibility and resonance about what's at stake here," Simon told the Hollywood Reporter.

"The thing about Meryl Streep is that we're used to journalists championing this issue. She said the press needs to go out there and do what it needs to do and needs to be defended by all of us."

Simon commented on the fact Mr Trump does not like being criticised by the press and questioned whether this anger would translate into concrete policy once he is inaugurated in ten days time.

"Trump does not like to be criticised in the media. The media will criticise him and expose him in ways he doesn't like. He'll be angry, no question. Will it just be angry rants and tweets, or will it be translated into policies that are detrimental to how the media functions? We'll see."

Streep's viral speech about Mr Trump prompted a characteristic Twitter tirade from the Republican. He said she was one of the most "over-rated actresses in Hollywood" and is a "Hillary flunky who lost big".

He also denied the fact he had imitated a disabled reporter. "For the 100th time, I never 'mocked' a disabled reporter (would never do that) but simply showed him 'groveling' when he totally changed a 16 year old story that he had written in order to make me look bad. Just more very dishonest media!"

In November 2015, Mr Trump was widely condemned for mocking Mr Kovaleski - who had disputed Mr Trump's claim he witnessed "thousands" of Muslims in New Jersey celebrating on the day of the 9/11 attacks.

Mr Trump jerked and flailed his arms in a manner which poked fun at the reporter's condition. Mr Kovaleski has arthrogryposis, a congenital condition affecting how his joints move.

"There was one performance this year that stunned me. It sank its hooks in my heart," Streep said in her speech. "It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter. Someone he outranked in privilege, power and the capacity to fight back."

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Meryl Streep's speech didn't just humiliate Donald Trump, it did something far more important

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Meryl Streep's rebuke of Donald Trump at the Golden Globes had a predictable outcome. It was widely lauded by Hollywood stars and prompted a Twitter tirade from the President-elect. However there was an altogether more unexpected consequence.

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I chose the first amendment because I feel as though many groups or organizations are silenced because of their controversial/opposing beliefs. Some of my favorite political bloggers were demonetized from their platforms because of their ideologies. I think that it's extremely important that everyone is permitted to speak freely without repercussions and open the echo chambers.

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This group have actively antagonized those of whom disagree with their political views. Those of whom exercise their freedom to protest, are immediately violated by this terrorist group.

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Anti-fascist activists, or "antifa," increasingly mobilized in the wake of President Trump's election, are unapologetic about what they describe as the necessary use of violence to combat authoritarianism.

While both experts on the movement and activists within it emphasize that not everyone who participates in anti-fascist activism engages in violence, they say the use of force is intrinsic to their political philosophy.

"The justification [of the use of violence] is that Nazi ideology at its very core is founded on violence and on wielding power by any means," said Mike Isaacson, one of the founders of Smash Racism D.C., an antifa organization in Washington.

Isaacson is unequivocal in his defense of violence as a legitimate tool to combat the creeping threat of what he deems authoritarianism.

"There is the question of whether these people should feel safe organizing as Nazis in public, and I don't think they should," said Isaacson.

"I don't think anyone should think that someone who is intent on politically organizing for the sake of creating a state-sponsored genocide - I don't think is something that we should protect," he said.

Antifa activists justify their use of violence as self-defense against "the inherent danger of fascists organizing," according to Mark Bray, a Dartmouth historian and author of a recent book on the movement.

"The argument is that it needs to be stopped immediately, because if you let it grow, that poses a danger to society," Bray said.

Dubbed the "alt-left" by President Trump, antifa has increasingly been making their presence known after his victory in the 2016 election was openly embraced by white supremacists.

On Sunday, antifa protesters hurled glass bottles and bricks at police officers monitoring a far-right march in Portland, Ore.

And the University of California, Berkeley, is bracing for the possibility of more violent clashes on Thursday, when conservative political commentator and former Breitbart editor Ben Shapiro is scheduled to speak.

There is no central organizing committee governing antifa, and different affiliated groups have different priorities and governing principles, making it impossible to gauge the growth of the movement in the wake of the election.

But activists and law enforcement sources say anecdotally that their numbers have almost certainly swelled. Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, the nation's largest law enforcement union, told The Hill that he has "for sure" seen rising interest in the movement since Trump's election, noting that six months ago he had never even heard of antifa.

As early as 2016, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI warned state and local officials that antifa had become increasingly confrontational and were engaging in "domestic terrorist violence."

While Bray says antifa focuses mostly on nonviolent activities, such as researching white supremacists and disrupting their efforts to organize, the movement's more violent methods - and its use of so-called black bloc tactics, where activists wear black masks and clothing to conceal their identity - have drawn fierce criticism from the right and divided the left.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), for example, has condemned antifa's use of violence.

Liberal activist Cornel West, in contrast, said that antifa activists saved him and other counterprotesters in Charlottesville, Va., from "being crushed like cockroaches" by "alt-right" demonstrators.

The antifa movement traces its roots to militant leftists who combated fascism in the streets of Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. The movement saw a revival in response to neo-Nazi activity in the U.K. and Germany in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.

The philosophy was first transposed to the U.S. in the 1980s by anti-racist activists in Minneapolis, according to Bray, and while its popularity has ebbed and flowed since then, there are several current groups that have been around for almost 10 years. Rose City Antifa in Portland, Ore., for example, was established in 2007.

If the loosely affiliated network of far-left activists can be said to have a creed, it is to combat what it sees as fascism wherever it occurs.

Rose City Antifa defines fascism as "an ultra-nationalist ideology that mobilizes around and glorifies a national identity defined in exclusive racial, cultural, and/or historical terms, valuing this identity above all other interests (ie: gender or class)."

Antifa also tend to be deeply mistrustful of the police and often overlaps ideologically with anarchism, a political philosophy that Isaacson defines as a society built on cooperation and mutual aid. Isaacson, who is an anarchist, argues that in order to be successful, anti-fascism has to operate outside of government.

"Getting state involved in this is no better than letting the Nazis go free," he said, pointing to the Virginia State Police response to the violence at the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, which many protesters and counterprotesters criticized as too slow.

Activists, including Isaacson, claim that police departments and the military have been infiltrated by Nazis and "have them kind of on their side."

Pasco insists that police officers are agnostic as to whether a person committing a crime is antifa or "alt-right."

"We don't really have a perspective on [antifa] because it's not really a movement - it's kind of an amorphous group of people," Pasco said.

"Nobody gets policed unless they need policing - there are just not enough police officers in the United States to satisfy the vanity of those who believe they are under constant surveillance," he said.

Others see evidence of a disproportionate police response to antifa activists, such as those who criticized law enforcement in Portland for firing rubber bullets and stun grenades into a crowd of antifa protesters on Sunday.

"The way law enforcement has reacted to the protests far exceeds the amount of danger involved, particularly when we talk about violence at far-right protests - because there is a long and deep history of murderous violence coming out of the far-right movements that continues up to today that far exceeds anything associated with antifa," said Mike German, a former FBI agent who works on law enforcement issues at the Brennan Center for Justice's Liberty and National Security Program.

Antifa's use of violence continues to dominate the national conversation. In January, shortly after a black-clad protester attacked the far-right activist Richard Spencer, The New York Times mused: "Is it OK to punch a Nazi?"

Isaacson, for his part, has not engaged in the use of violent tactics himself, "if for no other reason than I'm rather slight of frame," he said with a chuckle.

"I'm not so good in a fight," he said.

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Antifa activists say violence is necessary

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Anti-fascist activists, or "antifa," increasingly mobilized in the wake of President Trump's election, are unapologetic about what they describe as the necessary use of violence to combat authoritarianism. While both experts on the movement and activists within it emphasize that not everyone who participates in anti-fascist activism engages in violence, they say the use of force is intrinsic to their political philosophy.

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Congress shall make no law abridging the right of the people peacefully to assemble

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Freedom of Speech: Crash Course Government and Politics #25

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AntiFa attacks Trump supporters at Berkley Riot

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Violent AntiFa anarchists at a Berkley riot covered their faces just like the KKK. Police stood down and let the mob rule while the Democrats said nothing .....

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"The press was to serve the governed, not the governors."- Hugo Black

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Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

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Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

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In society, you're allowed a group or creed if it's publicly acceptable, otherwise, it isn't permitted.

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Faith is something that should expressed freely, as long as it doesn't press onto other people's lifestyles. Should mosques or other sanctions of religion be allowed to infringe others even if indirectly?

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Residents can complain about loud mosque call to prayers, Islamic Affairs department says

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An Iacad spokesman said there are limits to how loud or how low a mosque's call to prayer should be and he said people are free to complain if the noise is either too loud or too quiet.