According to this report, the London Olympic Delivery Authority has been forcing contractors to sign 'draconian' deals, essentially barring them from discussing conditions, progress, costs (including environmental and health and safety costs) or...
I really don't understand this. At all.
Our friend Roby Alampay of the South East Asian Press Alliance has an interesting post on Comment is Free on the iniquities of Thailand's lèse majesté laws: 'The charge of lese-majesty [sic] can be brought against anyone by anybody else. In the...
The Advertising Standards Authority has (sensibly, it should be said) decided not to get involved in an argument over whether God is likely to exist or not. Despite complaints by Britain's leading Christian campaigning group/some bloke with...
Index on Censorship, Article 19 and English PEN have issued a joint statement on the shocking murder of Anastasiya Barburova and Stanislav Markelov in Moscow yesterday. Read below The shocking murder of the lawyer Stanislav Markelov, and the young...
Rebecca MacKinnon knows more than practically anyone other westerner about free expression in China. Over at her blog, rconversation, she has written a rather excellent and comprehensive (read 'long') analysis of Charter 08, the pro-reform...
The UK press is buzzing with the news of Russian Alexander Lebedev's takeover of London's Evening Standard. So what can Standard staff expect? Abramovich-style injections of cash? Possibly not: less than two months ago, Novaya Gazeta, the Russian...
Author Sherry Jones's novel about Mohammed's wife Aisha, The Jewel of Medina, sparked considerable controversy last year, culminating in an attack on her UK publisher's house. Jones has decided to start the new year with an interesting proposal for...
Rachel Shabi in the Guardian points out the role of Israel's recently-created National Information Directorate in the portrayal of the conflict in Gaza. The Directorate was set up after an inquiry in to the second Lebanon war in 2006, with the aim...
Irish politician, writer and intellectual Conor Cruise O'Brien has died at the age of 91. Always controversial, 'The Cruiser' was one of the few intellectual heavyweights in Irish politics. He was internationally renowned, but at home probably best...
You may have noticed the announcement earlier this week of a joint inquiry in to libel by Index on Censorship and English PEN. The issue of the unfairness of UK defamation laws has been exercising us for some time, and we're not the only ones....
With remarkably little comment, the Internet Watch Foundation reversed its block on the Wikipedia page for the Scorpions' Virgin Killer album last week. Seems they weren't actually sure whether the 32-year-old image was illegal or not. Meanwhile,...