US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will today (2.30pm GMT) deliver a speech emphasising the importance of web freedom in US foreign policy. You can watch it at http://www.state.gov/.
Index on Censorship has lined up some key Internet commentators to analyse Clinton’s speech.
UPDATE: Read Index panel here
In an interview in the Irish Times on Saturday, comic Dara O’Briain had some harsh words for Ireland’s new blasphemy law:
“I think it is a ludicrous notion that you can sue people for blasphemy,” he says. “I think it is an absolutely abhorrent idea that religion in and of itself must remain without question and cannot be insulted and cannot be attacked. I don’t say this in a childish, petty way. I am not going to rush to become a challenge or a test case for it, but it is insane in this day and age that a quasi-medieval church-and-state symbiosis should exist and that somebody will step in.”
O’Briain also voiced his support for the libel reform campaign:
“It is not that I think that comedians are going to be hit with this, I don’t think we are,” he says. “A company would look ridiculous for suing a comedian for a joke about a brand of shampoo, or a set of razor blades, but it is worrying that cardiologists can be sued for making quite justifiable and fair comments about medical equipment on Canadian TV in a British court.”
Read the full interview here.
Index on Censorship chief executive John Kampfner updated Observer readers on the campaign’s progress:
Just before Christmas, the justice secretary responded to the flurry of activity around our campaign by announcing his own inquiry. He asked our two groups, Index on Censorship and English PEN, to nominate one among our number to sit on his group.
When I found out that they had invited Carter-Ruck and Schillings, two major law firms which feast on chilling the free speech of scientists, authors, NGOs and journalists, I suggested to Straw’s people that the two authors of the libel report, Index’s editor, Jo Glanville, and PEN’s director, Jonathan Heawood, should both be members of the inquiry team. As it stood, the composition ran against Straw’s “apparent desire to be seen as a reformer”, I suggested. They quickly relented, arguing that my term “apparent” was unfair. We shall see. This Labour government, after all, has form, creating commissions with the purpose of delaying or diluting change or delivering whitewashes. Perhaps this time Straw may deliver positive change. If he doesn’t, we won’t be bashful in our response.
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Read more here.
And in the same paper, David Mitchell defended the right to be offensive in the light of Islam4UK’s proposed demonstration in Wootton Bassett:
The thing about freedom of speech is that people are allowed to say offensive, indefensible things; that we needn’t fear that because we’re sure that wiser counsels are more likely to convince. “Let the idiots and bullies speak openly and they will be revealed for what they are!” is the idea. It’s a brilliant one and, in confident, educated societies, it almost always works — certainly much more often than any of the alternatives. Why has Alan Johnson lost confidence in this principle? Why have the 700,000 signatories of a Facebook petition calling for the event to be banned?
Read the full article here
Barack Obama’s promise to break with secrecy has been short-lived, says Melissa Goodman, in an exclusive article for Index on Censorship”s review of 2009
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In what seems to have already turned into one of the greatest own goals in the history of the legal profession, solicitors Carter-Ruck won an injunction yesterday, forbidding the reporting of a parliamentary question put by an MP, regarding another injunction.
It cannot be overstated how utterly contrary to democracy this development is. Representative democracy depends on the concept that parliamentarians can speak without fear, and the public can listen to and read what they say, whether sitting in the gallery or through print, broadcast and online media. Democracy, perhaps even more so than justice, must not just be practised: it must be seen to be practised.
That a judge should glibly overturn this concept, even temporarily, puts us truly in GUBU territory. This is, to quote the late Conor Cruise O’Brien, grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented.
The Guardian newspaper goes to court today in an effort to overturn this travesty. Anyone who believes in a free press, free expression and democracy must support their efforts.
Update: it didn’t go to court