[Official] Censorship from governmental actors thread

more discussion of the **** Biden signs

https://www.outsidethebeltway.com/f-biden-signs-and-free-speech/

excerpt

So, Dilascio and her daughter are not the classiest women in the state of New Jersey. I’m not a fan of their politics. And, were I their neighbor, I would consider these signs an eyesore and a nuisance. But, rather clearly, this is a violation of their First Amendment rights.

I am dubious of the Constitutionality of § 3-8.1 of the borough code, which states that,

It shall be unlawful for any person, firm, corporation, business association, club, group of individuals or any combination of the aforementioned to knowingly photograph, act in, pose for, print, sell, offer for sale, give away, exhibit, publish or offer to publish or otherwise distribute or pander, make, display or exhibit any obscene material, communication or performance or other article or item which is obscene within the Borough.​

In contrast with the wildly unconstitutional (as defined by a number of Supreme Court decisions) definition of obscenity in the article, the actual language in § 3-8.2 is likely fine:

The word “obscene” shall mean any material, communication or performance which the average person applying contemporary community standards existing within the municipality, would find, when considered as a whole:

a. Appeals to the prurient interest;

b. Depicts or describes in a patently offensive way sexual conduct as hereinafter specifically defined, or depicts or exhibits offensive nakedness as hereinafter specifically defined; and

c. Lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.​

The “and” between sections b and c is crucial. But, because of that, Bundy’s ruling that the sign qualifies as obscene is absurd, if not outright moronic. While the fetish and deviant communities are vast, and I am sure that I could, with sufficient effort, find a subreddit where “**** Biden” would inspire sexual arousal, I would be willing to bet that the vast majority of community residents in Roselle Park, New Jersey would instead see it as a vulgar expression of distaste for the sitting President of the United States. And, as such, it deserves the highest possible protection from government interference.

Fifty years ago last month, in Cohen v. California, the Supreme Court ruled that a man had the right to wear a jacket emblazoned with “**** THE DRAFT” in a state courthouse. Justice Harlan famously declared that “one man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric” and ruled, “Absent a more particularized and compelling reason for its actions, the State may not, consistently with the First and Fourteenth Amendments, make the simple public display of this single four-letter expletive a criminal offense.”

The “particularized and compelling reason” in this case seems to be that the house in question is in some proximity to a schoolhouse. According to a previous NJ.com report, “A map of the home shows it is around the corner and down a short, four-home block from the corner of a local elementary school’s property.”

I’m sympathetic to a community instinct to want to protect small children from vulgarity. If Dilascio and Dick were screaming “**** Biden” to the children as they walked by, I think the Borough would have a case here (although almost certainly not under their obscenity ordinance). But a static sign is another matter.

Bundy stated in the hearing that parents shouldn’t have to explain to their small children what the “F-word” means as a condition of walking them to school. And, again, I’m sympathetic to that. But, frankly, I’m skeptical that, given the ubiquity of that word in our modern discourse, they haven’t already heard it. And, regardless, that aesthetic ideal is outweighed by the free speech rights of the homeowner.
​

more at the link

 

a California court has struck down a law that made the intentional mis-gendering of an individual against their wishes a criminal act

https://libertarianhub.com/2021/07/...lized-certain-uses-of-non-preferred-pronouns/

excerpt:

CALIFORNIA COURT STRIKES DOWN LAW THAT CRIMINALIZED CERTAIN USES OF NON-PREFERRED PRONOUNS
Posted by Reason | Jul 17, 2021 | Politics & Culture | 0

In Taking Offense v. California, decided yesterday by the California Court of Appeal, in an opinion by Justice Elena Duarte, joined by Justices Harry Hull and Ronald Robie, the court considered (among other things) the constitutionality of Cal. Health & Safety Code § 1439.51(a)(5) which provides, in part,

It shall be unlawful for a long-term care facility or facility staff to take any of the following actions wholly or partially on the basis of a person’s … gender identity[ or] gender expression …: Willfully and repeatedly fail to use a resident’s preferred name or pronouns after being clearly informed of the preferred name or pronouns.” …​

The court concluded the pronoun portion of the law was a content-based speech restriction (it didn’t discuss the name portion in detail):

Applying Reed v. Town of Gilbert (2015), the pronoun provision is content based on its face because it draws a distinction between what is and what is not permissible based on the content of what is said. If an employee’s speech repeatedly and willfully misgenders [i.e., systematically misuses the preferred pronouns of] a long-term care facility resident, the speech is criminalized. If an employee’s speech does not misgender a resident, or if the employee misgenders the resident only once or unintentionally, the speech is not criminalized. To determine whether an employee has violated the pronoun provision, an enforcement authority must analyze the content of the speech (McCullen v. Coakley (2014) [law is content based where it requires enforcing authority to analyze the content of the speech]) and determine whether the content of the speech runs afoul of the law. Moreover, the Legislature’s purpose in enacting the law was to prohibit staff from willfully and repeatedly misgendering a resident due to the harassing, discriminatory, or insulting nature of that speech; in other words, its communicative effect….

[T]he Attorney General argues the law is content neutral because it does not dictate speech; employees remain free to avoid using the pronouns at issue entirely…. [But] “the First Amendment against state action includes both the right to speak freely and the right to refrain from speaking at all.” For purposes of the First Amendment, there is no difference between a law compelling an employee to utter a resident’s preferred pronoun and prohibiting an employee from uttering a pronoun the resident does not prefer….

[T]he Attorney General [also] contends the restriction on speech is content neutral because pronouns are merely stand-ins for nouns and are not ideological messages. But the Legislature understood the importance of pronouns’ content and, thereby, their meaning, in this context, to the point that it passed a law criminalizing misgendering transgender residents of long-term care facilities.

We recognize that misgendering may be disrespectful, discourteous, and insulting, and used as an inartful way to express an ideological disagreement with another person’s expressed gender identity. But the First Amendment does not protect only speech that inoffensively and artfully articulates a person’s point of view. At the very least, willful refusal to refer to transgender persons by their preferred pronouns conveys general disagreement with the concept that a person’s gender identity may be different from the sex the person was assigned at birth…​

more at the link

​

​

 

"Keep in mind that these companies already have the largest censorship system in our history. It is being managed by private corporations but directed to some extent by government officials. Just this week, the White House admitted it has been flagging “misinformation” for Facebook to censor. This outsourcing of censorship allows government officials to do indirectly what they cannot do directly. It creates the specter of a type of shared shadow state."

https://jonathanturley.org/2021/07/...ld-be-accountable-for-vaccine-misinformation/

White House Communications Director: Big Tech Should be “Accountable” for Vaccine “Misinformation”


July 21, 2021

There was an unnerving conversation between between Biden White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield and MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski that shows how much ground has been lost on principles of free speech. In an exchange on Morning Joe, Brzezinski asks Bedingfield why Biden has not completed his promised review of Section 230 and create an avenue to held social media companies “accountable in a real way” for spreading “misinformation” about vaccines. Brzezinski ignores not only the constitutional implications of such a move but ignores how such an approach would eviscerate free speech and free press rights. Equally chilling is the response. Bedingfield agrees and assured Brzezinski that the Biden Administration believes these companies should be held accountable for allowing others to voice doubts or dissenting opinions on such questions.

Bedingfield assures Brzezinski that they are “reviewing” Section 230 and that the Biden Administration does believe that the media companies need to d be held “accountable.”

Vaccine “truth” has become the latest means for calling for more censorship from social media companies. It is better than the prior use of election misinformation because now advocates can claim that free speech is actually killing people. Indeed, President Joe Biden recently declared publicly that Facebook is “killing people” by not censoring free speech. He later walked back his comments.

Keep in mind that these companies already have the largest censorship system in our history. It is being managed by private corporations but directed to some extent by government officials. Just this week, the White House admitted it has been flagging “misinformation” for Facebook to censor. This outsourcing of censorship allows government officials to do indirectly what they cannot do directly. It creates the specter of a type of shared shadow state.

Facebook only recently announced that people on its platform may discuss the origins of COVID-19, after previously censoring such discussion — but it still bars opposing views on vaccinations and the pandemic. Other companies actively block wayward thoughts and views; last week, YouTube was fined by a German court for censoring videos of protests over COVID restrictions.

When Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey came before the Senate to apologize for blocking the Hunter Biden story before the election as a mistake, senators pressed him and other Big Tech executive for more censorship.

In that hearing, members like Sen. Mazie Hirono (D., HI) pressed witnesses like Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey for assurance that Trump would remain barred from speaking on their platforms: “What are both of you prepared to do regarding Donald Trump’s use of your platforms after he stops being president, will be still be deemed newsworthy and will he still be able to use your platforms to spread misinformation?”

Rather than addressing the dangers of such censoring of news accounts, Senator Chris Coons pressed Dorsey to expand the categories of censored material to prevent people from sharing any views that he considers “climate denialism.” Likewise, Senator Richard Blumenthal seemed to take the opposite meaning from Twitter, admitting that it was wrong to censor the Biden story. Blumenthal said that he was “concerned that both of your companies are, in fact, backsliding or retrenching, that you are failing to take action against dangerous disinformation.” Accordingly, he demanded an answer to this question:

“Will you commit to the same kind of robust content modification playbook in this coming election, including fact checking, labeling, reducing the spread of misinformation, and other steps, even for politicians in the runoff elections ahead?”​

“Robust content modification” has a certain appeal, like a type of software upgrade. It is not content modification. It is censorship. If our representatives are going to crackdown on free speech, they should admit to being advocates for censorship.

The public however is not entirely sold on censorship on an expanding array of subjects from gender identification to election fraud to criticism of foreign governments. That is why the pandemic is the perfect vehicle for getting a free people to turn against free speech. You simply declare, as did Biden, that free speech kills. It can kill you. You then push companies to censor more under the threat of being held “accountable.”

The fact is that you generally cannot hold people legally “accountable” for saying things that politicians or media figures like Brzezinski do not like about vaccines or climate change or any other controversy. The regulation of companies can offer some regulatory avenues for inducing corporate censorship like threatening to take away immunity if they do not serve as surrogate censors. However, that can also raise constitutional issues both as a question of corporate speech or converting these companies into state actors.

The greatest danger is that these political and media figures are signaling that they want even greater levels of censorship and that these private companies will accommodate them. They already have. The result is the expansion of an already massive censorship system that controls much of our political discourse.

​

 

Biden Wants To Punish Facebook for the Government's Own Vaccine Failures
Federal health bureaucrats should stop scapegoating social media

https://reason.com/2021/07/20/facebook-biden-section-230-vaccine-hesitancy-covid-19/

excerpt

Biden has long supported getting rid of Section 230, though it would take an act of Congress to do so. Ironically, Section 230 is equally unpopular with many Republicans—including former President Donald Trump, who has called for its total repeal—because they consider it a sort of special perk enjoyed by tech companies that are purportedly hostile to conservative users. But the Biden administration's latest threats should disabuse Republicans of their anti-230 notions once and for all. The White House wants Facebook to proactively censor more content, and views Section 230 as an obstacle getting in the way of that goal. Repealing Section 230 is thus not a great solution to the alleged problem of tech companies banning too many provocative right-wing accounts; Democrats in the federal government want to repeal Section 230 so that tech companies have no choice but to ban more content.

Anti-Facebook Republicans are making a tactical error; the Biden White House, on the other hand, is just plain wrong about the degree to which social media is responsible for vaccine hesitancy. By focusing on the perceived harms of too much anti-vax content on Facebook, the administration is neglecting a dozen other strategies it could pursue to boost countrywide vaccination.

For one, it's far from clear that social media—or Facebook in particular—is predominantly responsible for vaccine hesitancy, a problem that predates the internet. Facebook users are actually more likely to be vaccinated than the average U.S. citizen, according to the company's data.

"The data shows that 85 percent of Facebook users in the U.S. have been or want to be vaccinated against COVID-19," wrote Guy Rosen, Facebook's vice president of integrity. "President Biden's goal was for 70 percent of Americans to be vaccinated by July 4. Facebook is not the reason this goal was missed."

Misinformation exists on every medium and in every form of communication from radio to television to word of mouth. The government itself has spread misinformation about COVID-19, from early (bad) guidance on masks to coronavirus czar Anthony Fauci's deliberate misstatements about herd immunity. Even when it comes to vaccines, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was initially cautious about letting vaccinated individuals discard masks and social distancing protocols, which might have made the vaccine seem pointless for some low-risk individuals. It's naive to presume that social media is the primary driver of vaccine hesitancy.

"We don't have good measures of what people see on social media or any ability to link it to their vaccination behavior," noted Brendan Nyhan, a professor of government at Dartmouth College who thinks the harm posed by social media is overstated.

Even the focus on Facebook, as opposed to other sites like YouTube—where anti-vaccine content is probably more widespread—betrays the government's limited understanding of the scope of these issues. It seems that many Democrats still incorrectly attribute Hillary Clinton's 2016 loss to Facebook malfeasance: They have updated their grievances but retained the same target for misplaced ire.

If the White House wants to promote vaccination—a worthy goal!—it should stop being so obsessed with what's happening on Facebook, and social media more broadly. Instead, Biden should push the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to, you know, actually approve the vaccines, which are currently available under emergency use authorization. Despite the global pandemic, federal regulators are proceeding as if there's no reason to rush: Full authorization of the Pfizer vaccine is not expected until January. If the government wants to ease reluctant people's trepidation that the vaccines are in some sense experimental, moving faster on this front would do more good than heckling Mark Zuckerberg.
​

more at the link

​

 

Biden Is Trying to Impose Online Censorship by Proxy
The administration’s public pressure campaign against COVID-19 "misinformation" cannot be reconciled with its avowed respect for freedom of expression.

https://reason.com/2021/07/21/biden-is-trying-to-impose-online-censorship-by-proxy/

 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/...ists-over-seditious-childrens-books-ltnl2h0vm

Hong Kong police arrest speech therapists over ‘seditious’ children’s books

Didi Tang, Beijing
Thursday July 22 2021, 11.00am BST, The Times

One of the five speech therapists, who were hooded and led away as police searched for evidence at an office in Hong Kong
VINCENT YU/AP
Five speech therapists were arrested this morning by Hong Kong’s national security police, accused of conspiring to share “seditious” children’s books.

The arrests, during which hooded suspects were led away by officials, came after three books, published by the General Association of Hong Kong Speech Therapists, described Hong Kong’s pro-democracy activists as sheep who were protecting their village by fighting a pack of wolves.

Pro-Beijing newspapers and politicians have called the books an attempt to “poison” the minds of children by promoting freedom from Beijing in the territory. A senior Hong Kong education official claimed that they had used fables to spread political propaganda.

The two men and three women arrested, who are aged between 25 and 28, are accused of “inciting hatred among the . . ."
​

more at the link

​

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/24/opinion/sunday/free-speech-case-New-Jersey.html

It Is Every American’s Right to Curse the President
July 24, 2021

By The Editorial Board
The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.

There is little question that Gary Bundy, a municipal court judge in New Jersey, violated the constitutional rights of Andrea Dick this month by ordering her to remove three banners emblazoned with crude messages about President Biden.

The Supreme Court has made clear that the offending word Ms. Dick used in the banners, which she posted on her mother’s fence in Roselle Park, is legal in political statements. It ruled in a famous 1971 case that a draft protester had the right to wear a jacket with a message that one of his lawyers memorably described as “not actually advocating sexual intercourse with the Selective Service.”

Americans, especially judges, have an obligation to know the law. The limits of free speech are subject to debate, but Ms. Dick’s case does not approach those boundaries. She has the right to curse out the president of the United States, and it should not require an appeals court to deliver that news to Roselle Park.

Discomfort with vulgarity is understandable. The word Ms. Dick used is one that this newspaper often avoids publishing. But the decision by a judge in a liberal town to constrain the free speech rights of an outspoken conservative is symptomatic of a troubling trend: a growing sense among many Americans that the United States cannot afford to maintain the full measure of its foundational commitment to free speech.

The strength of First Amendment protections depends on public support. History shows that when faith in the value of free speech is eroded, the freedom is soon eroded, too.

The loss of faith is intertwined with other challenges to the American experiment. Political polarization is straining the ability of Americans to understand each other’s viewpoints, as well as their tolerance for what they cannot understand.

Americans also are losing confidence that their political opponents will play by the same rules, undermining the argument that allowing others to speak is the best safeguard of one’s own right to do so. After right-wing extremists rioted in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017, the American Civil Liberties Union took a step back from its long history of defending the speech rights of extremist groups. It issued guidelines instructing its attorneys that before representing groups whose “values are contrary to our values,” they should consider whether doing so might give “offense to marginalized groups.”

Amid a rise in political violence, especially by right-wing extremists, there is also a growing impatience with the distinction between speech and violence.

Twenty states with Republican-controlled legislatures have invoked the fear of violence as a justification for new laws cracking down on racial justice protests. Florida, Iowa and Oklahoma passed laws granting immunity to drivers who strike protesters. Some of the same states also have recently enacted laws that seek to restrict instruction in public schools about the role of racism in the nation’s history.

There is no comparable effort by elected Democrats to impose legal restrictions on the expression of right-wing views. But it is increasingly common to hear the expression of intolerant views described as violence. Liberals also have sought to exclude viewpoints they regard as offensive from forums including university campuses and social media sites, as in the recent campaign to ban Donald Trump from Twitter and Facebook.

The maintenance, or the restoration, of healthy and sustainable political discourse in the United States requires an uncompromising crackdown on anyone engaged in acts of political violence — and an uncompromising defense of political speech. It is not enough for Americans to feel safe in the public square. Democracy requires that we feel safe while shouting at each other.

This year, Ms. Dick bought a number of anti-Biden banners with messages that range from the G-rated “Don’t Blame Me, I Voted for Trump,” right on up to what Judge Bundy described as words that children are not asked to spell at spelling bees.

In the Supreme Court’s 1971 decision, Justice John Marshall Harlan II, defending the language on the anti-draft jacket, wrote that “one man’s vulgarity is another man’s lyric.”

The truth in that case, of course, is that the word was intended as a vulgarity. It’s a safe bet that Ms. Dick bought the signs because she, too, wanted to offend her neighbors.

She put up the banners in early June. Neighbors complained to the mayor, who called a code enforcement officer who cited Ms. Dick’s mother, the house’s owner, for violating an ordinance that prohibits the display of “obscene material.” The signs stayed up and the town took her to court, where Judge Bundy ordered her to remove three signs or face a fine of $250 per day.

“Today was a win for the borough and decency,” the mayor told NJ.com. “While we respect the views of our residents, there’s no place for profanity by a school and school children.”

The right to free speech must be balanced against other considerations, and the Supreme Court imposes a wide range of restrictions. Americans are not free to libel or to incite violence, to curse on the radio or to hold noisy demonstrations in the middle of the night.

The limits of free speech also are subject to debate. Society’s standards change; the court is fallible. This board strongly disagrees, for example, with the court’s view that corporate spending on political campaigns is a constitutionally protected form of free speech.

But the animating spirit of the First Amendment is that the boundaries of free speech must remain as expansive as possible. The right to hang banners is a small thing, but the value of free speech inheres in acts of individual expression just as much as in grand statements of collective purpose.

A version of this article appears in print on July 25, 2021, Section SR, Page 6 of the New York edition with the headline: The Right to Curse Joe Biden.
​

 

this is for the folks who still don't think the government/Facebook/Twitter issue is significant. very good essay

"The Trump Lawsuits, the Biden Administration’s Misinformation Advisory and the Thorny First Amendment Problem of Jawboning":

https://www.lawfareblog.com/trump-l...n-advisory-and-thorny-first-amendment-problem

excerpt:

For years now, scholars have expressed alarm at the tendency of government officials to use informal means, rather than democratically enacted laws, to pressure the social media companies to take down what they consider to be harmful or offensive speech. The term commonly used to refer to this kind of informal (but often quite effective) practice of government speech suppression is “jawboning.” While by no means unique to the digital public sphere, jawboning has come to be a particularly common tactic of government regulation of the social media platforms, in part because the government has few other means of regulating what the social media companies do. Scholars have worried, for good reason, that the practice of jawboning allows government officials to evade the stringent constraints on their power to regulate speech imposed by the First Amendment. But relatively little attention has been paid to the constitutional question of whether, or rather when, government jawboning itself violates the First Amendment.

Two recent events have pushed this question to the front page. The first of these events was President Trump’s decision in early July to file class-action lawsuits against Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. These lawsuits accuse the companies of violating Trump and the other class members’ First Amendment rights when they took down, deprioritized, or shadow banned the plaintiffs’ speech. Although the lawsuits have attracted much derision from legal scholars for getting the “First Amendment exactly wrong” by failing to recognize that it applies only to government actors, not private corporations, the core argument the Trump complaints make is not that Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are generally bound by the First Amendment but, rather, that the companies “censored” Trump and other class members’ speech because of what the complaints describe as the “overt coercion” of Democratic members of Congress. In other words, the Trump lawsuits make a First Amendment jawboning argument and one that clearly identifies Democratic members of Congress as the agents who were ultimately responsible for the violation of the plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights (even though, as is sometimes the case, the complaints name no government officials as defendants).

The second jawboning-related event was the July 15 release by the U.S. surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, of a health advisory warning of the perils to the national public health of social media-disseminated misinformation related to the coronavirus. The advisory and accompanying press conference, in which White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki announced that 12 people were producing 65 percent of the anti-vaccine misinformation on social media platforms and called on Facebook, in particular, to take “faster action against harmful posts,” generated a vigorous debate about whether the White House’s actions violated the First Amendment rights of Facebook and its users.

Both of these events raise, in somewhat different contexts (the first a court case, the second a public relations kerfuffle), the question of where the line falls between permissible government pressure and impermissible government coercion when it comes to efforts to get social media platforms to suppress harmful speech. Whatever answer courts give to this important question will shape the relationship between government officials and the social media companies that play such a powerful role in contemporary public life. It will help determine, in other words, the balance of power between the old-fashioned governors of the brick-and-mortar public sphere and the “new governors” of the digital public sphere.

It is not an easy question to answer, however, either doctrinally or normatively. This is because the relevant Supreme Court cases are quite inconsistent in the rules they apply to determine when government efforts to pressure private speech intermediaries into suppressing speech violate the First Amendment. This inconsistency can be blamed in part on the fact that there are good reasons to both support and oppose a broad First Amendment rule against jawboning. (Beware those who say the First Amendment issues are easy here.) In this post, I sketch out the doctrinal landscape as it currently stands before exploring the difficult normative questions that jawboning cases force us to grapple with.​

more at the link

 

A New Florida Bill Could Criminalize Filming Cops on the Job
"If the police don't want to be filmed or observed, they should get out of the public service field."

https://reason.com/2021/07/27/florida-bill-criminalize-filming-cops-first-amendment/

 

https://www.msn.com/en-xl/news/othe...person-convicted-under-legislation/ar-AAMJLVJ

Hong Kong national security law: 9 years’ jail for first person convicted under legislation

Brian Wong brian.wong@scmp.com


The first person convicted under Hong Kong's national security law was sentenced on Friday to nine years in prison for driving his motorcycle into a group of police officers last year while flying a flag calling for the city's "liberation".

Leon Tong Ying-kit, 24, was back before three High Court judges selected from a panel hand-picked by the city's leader after earlier being found guilty of terrorism and incitement to commit secession over his actions carried out on July 1 last year, within hours of the Beijing-imposed law taking effect.

They sentenced the former restaurant worker to 6 1/2 years for the secession crime and eight years for terrorism, with 5 1/2 years of the latter term to run concurrently with the first. He was also barred from driving for 10 years.

In their 15-page explanation of the punishment, the judges said Tong's incitement crime warranted five to 10 years behind bars, given the way he waved the flag and how he chose the first full day the security law was in effect to commit the offence.

"The defendant was not a lone protester quietly carrying a flag bearing the slogan amongst a sea of protesters," the judgment read. "He deliberately challenged a number of police check lines in order to attract as much attention to the secessionist message on the flag as possible and to leave a great impact and a strong impression on people."

The flag mounted to the back of Tong's motorcycle carried the slogan "Liberate Hong Kong; revolution of our times", a rallying cry of the 2019 anti-government movement, and which the bench had earlier found as capable of bearing a secessionist meaning.

But the bench accepted the incitement offence was not the worst of its kind, as Tong had acted alone and lacked an elaborate plan to separate Hong Kong from the rest of the nation.

They found he had committed a terrorist act causing grave harm to society by running into the three police officers - a symbol of law and order - and intimidating members of the public, especially those with opposing political views, by that action.

In weighing that offence, the judges said Tong had turned his motorbike into a lethal weapon used against the officers.

"What the defendant did was calculated and deliberate acts which created a very dangerous situation for the road users and which indeed caused injuries to three police officers," the judgment read.

But they agreed the injuries sustained by the officers were not "serious" as alleged by the prosecution and the starting point for sentencing for the charge should be between three and 10 years in jail.


© Provided by South China Morning Post Leon Tong's flag bore the slogan 'Liberate Hong Kong; revolution of our times', words the court ruled represented an attempt to incite secession. Photo: NowTV News

Tong, who has already spent nearly 13 months in custody, is expected to serve his sentence at the high-security Stanley Prison and will not be eligible for early release for at least five years.

Tong's counsel Clive Grossman SC said his client would lodge an appeal.

Madam Justice Esther Toh Lye-ping said the two terms should in principle be served separately as they concerned different crimes, but the bench had decided to order partially concurrent sentences.

"We consider that this overall term should sufficiently reflect the defendant's culpability in the two offences and the abhorrence of society, at the same time, achieving the deterrent effect required," she said.

At Thursday's mitigation hearing, the defence counsel described the accused as "a decent young man" who had committed the offences out of stupidity and was genuinely remorseful. Tong had been living with his father and younger sister at a public housing estate following his parents' divorce.

The court heard the defendant had taken first aid courses and attended protests two years ago - not to cause a disturbance, but to offer medical attention to those injured in the unrest.

But Toh said those considerations were outweighed by the serious nature of the offences.

The court also found it "obvious" that Tong should be disqualified from driving for a decade, given he was only holding a probationary licence at the time of the crime, his previous traffic convictions and the "very dangerous" manner in which he steered the motorbike into the officers.

The judges also found little merit in referring to previous sentences meted out for terrorism in other common law jurisdictions, such as Britain, Australia and Canada, saying: "The cultural and socio-economic situation pertaining at the material time when a sentence is considered by the court would not be identical".

Secretary for Security Chris Tang Ping-keung said he welcomed the conviction and his bureau would study the appropriateness of the sentence before deciding whether to take any further steps.

The court has ruled that the slogan could constitute a meaning for Hong Kong independence," he said. "We believe a Hongkonger who is a law-abiding citizen, who does not want to endanger national security or separate the country, would not be telling such a slogan."

Letters submitted to the court described Tong as simple-minded and kind-hearted, as well as a filial son who supported his family and his younger sister's studies abroad.

Tong's father believed his son was influenced by "bad publications that led to his wrong act", while his aunt took the view that her nephew had been "affected by some people in the society and the media's false reporting".

His maternal grandmother, who is battling cancer, wrote to the court asking for "one more hug" from her grandson before she died.

Tong also told the court in his own letter he had now come to realise that political views were matters of perspectives and should not be more important than human decency. Society should put aside hatred, he added.

Legal experts have since warned against the use of the slogan in future, while at least one mainland Chinese think tank has suggested other popular chants that challenge the local and central governments, such as "Five demands, not one less", could also be deemed problematic.

Liberal academics have called the ruling another blow to freedom of expression.
​

 

China seeks to ban karaoke songs in new crackdown on music that ‘harms national unity’

https://www.asiaone.com/china/china-seeks-ban-karaoke-songs-new-crackdown-music-harms-national-unity

excerpt:

China's Ministry of Culture is planning a major crackdown on karaoke songs that it deems subversive or pose a threat to national unity.

The ministry has proposed creating a centralised list of forbidden songs and it will expect karaoke venues to comply, according to a draft policy document published on the ministry's website late last week.

Under the plan, karaoke venues would be responsible for policing their song lists and deleting any songs that: "endanger national unity, sovereignty or territorial integrity, or harm national security, honour or interests". It will also ban songs that "incite ethnic hatred".

While the proposal did not mention any specific songs by name, in the past banned songs have been those seen as political or promoting poor social behaviour such as I love Taiwanese Girls, Fart, Beijing Hooligans and Don't Want to Go to School.

A central song list would be created by the ministry for karaoke venues and their operators who would then be responsible for deleting banned songs. Only "healthy" songs that "promote positive energy" will be allowed, and venues are encouraged to promote songs seen as championing the government's agenda.
​

more at the link

 

h/t @gifford1967

A $5 Million Fine for Classroom Discussions on Race? In Tennessee, This Is the New Reality

Tennessee aims to levy fines starting at $1 million and rising to $5 million on school districts each time one of their teachers is found to have “knowingly violated” state restrictions on classroom discussions about systemic racism, white privilege, and sexism, according to guidance proposed by the state’s department of education late last week...

https://www.edweek.org/leadership/a...-in-tennessee-this-is-the-new-reality/2021/08

 

China bans men it sees as not masculine enough from TV

https://apnews.com/article/lifestyl...ligion-china-62dda0fc98601dd5afa3aa555a901b3f

in other news, tinman still leading sweet lou in the poll

 

North Carolina Banned This Beer Because Bureaucrats Dislike the Label
Now they'll have to explain to a federal judge how this isn't a violation of the First Amendment.

https://reason.com/2021/09/08/north-carolina-banned-this-beer-because-bureaucrats-dislike-the-label/

excerpt:

Alcohol regulators in North Carolina have banned Flying Dog brewery from selling one of its beers in the state due to a label that's been deemed "in bad taste."

Flying Dog CEO Jim Caruso, who has tangled with beer label bureaucrats—and beaten them—in other states, says the North Carolina Alcohol Beverage Control (ABC) Board needs to crack open a copy of the U.S. Constitution. The North Carolina ABC's decision to prohibit sales of Flying Dog's Freezin' Season Winter Ale over the beer's label design "seems like a blatant violation of the First Amendment to me," says Caruso (who is a donor to the Reason Foundation, which publishes this website).

Later this week, a federal judge will have a say. Flying Dog has filed a lawsuit and is seeking an injunction to prevent the North Carolina ABC from blocking the distribution of the beer in the state. A hearing on the injunction is scheduled for September 9.

The offending label—like all Flying Dog beers—contains a distinctive cartoon image by illustrator Ralph Steadman, whose work with the Maryland-based brewery dates back to its roots in the gonzo-lands near Aspen, Colorado. It's not clear exactly what the state's regulators object to—though the naked, humanoid figure on the beer's label does sport a small appendage between its legs. Caruso says he suspects that "tail-like thing" is what triggered the ban.



Officially, however, all Flying Dog has been told is that the label is "inappropriate" and "in bad taste." That is all it takes for North Carolina to prohibit the beer from being marketed, sold, and distributed. The North Carolina ABC did not return requests for comment on Tuesday.

​

more at the link, including this video

 

another good one

Meet the Property Owner Who Created a Toilet Garden to Protest Local Officials
"I have my First Amendment rights," says Hank Robar.

https://reason.com/2021/09/07/hank-robar-potsdam-toilet-garden-zoning/

excerpt

These porcelain gardens did not sit well with the city elders, who sued Robar for local code violations in 2008. The case was dismissed when the code enforcement officer arrived at court without the documents against him.

Robar continued to frustrate Potsdam's poobahs by creating more and more of his art. Sometimes he added bathtubs and wash basins, but toilets and urinals dominate. "There's one from Clarkson College," Robar tells Reason.

In 2018, the town made one last attempt to dethrone Robar. The board of trustees passed a law against visible junk:

The deposit, accumulation, display and/or outdoor storage of junk, junk appliances, junk furniture, junk mobile homes, junk motor vehicles, garbage, regardless of quantity, is hereby prohibited within sight of neighboring property/properties and/or business concerns.​

At that point, said Robar, it was time to sue or get off the pot.

"I hired a lawyer and another lawyer," he says. "I have my First Amendment rights."

That's what his lawyers argued, too, alleging that the junk law was retaliation against Robar's artistic and political freedom of expression. They filed a federal lawsuit against Potsdam for violating Robar's rights, and demanded $7 million in damages.​

more at the link