The governor of Jigarwa State has withdrawn a complaint against an individual who allegedly wrote defamatory remarks about him on Facebook. Sule Lamido withdrew his complaint against Mukhtari Ibrahim Aminu after a court discharged Aminu of any wrongdoing. Aminu spent one day in prison after the defamation charge was levelled against him.
Donny Tobolski, a Californian high school student, recently described his teacher at as a “fat ass” and “a douche bag” on Facebook when he was set too much biology homework. The student was suspended for cyberbullying, despite posting the remarks via a home computer used outside school hours. But the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sprung to his defence, pointing out to his school, Mesa Verde High, that because the comments fell short of being threatening or of leading to “substantial or material disruption” they were protected speech under state and federal constitutions as well as the Educational Code. The school backed down and removed the suspension from the student’s records.
A victory for lawyers well-versed in law and precedents, certainly, but was it also a victory for free expression? Yes and no. Yes in that freedom of speech was taken seriously. But surely no in that the case will spawn thousands of abusive Facebook comments about teachers and perhaps encourage the pro-censorship lobby. Is that simply a price worth paying for circumscribing rights to freedom of speech that are at the heart of American democracy? Or is it a sign that the limits to freedom have been set in the wrong place?
At first glance this case seems absurd. From a British perspective, it might even be used as evidence of what is wrong with the far-reaching First Amendment speech-protection enjoyed in the US. Why should young people be licensed to abuse their teachers in a public forum? Does it really matter that the remarks were made from home? How does that serve democracy? It is surely not the kind of speech that the founding fathers would have wanted to protect, anyway. And not all liberals would argue that it should be protected. John Stuart Mill, for example, who defended extensive freedom of speech, believed that paternalism was appropriate towards children: it was only adults that should be free to live and speak as they saw fit, provided they didn’t incite violence or cause harm to others in the process.
Yet perhaps on reflection the ACLU’s position has more to be said for it than at first appears. Tobolski is 15 years old, a transitional age. He should be learning about the importance of being allowed to speak his mind, and the likely consequences of doing so. And schools should be clear about the limits of their jurisdiction over expression. He won’t have gained widespread respect for his comments and is no hero. But surely he and his schoolmates will have reflected deeply on what is at stake here. Those who speak freely and abusively should expect to have their views met with powerful counter-speech, not least from the people they denigrate. As usual, the underlying question is not whether there should be limits to freedom of speech, but the thorny one of precisely where those limits should be drawn.
Since yesterday, the hashtag #NomasSangre hit the Twitter waves in Mexico. Other hashtags like #RedMexico and #losqueremosvivos, were launched to promote mass reaction to violence in Mexico. #RedMexico is new, while #losqueremosvivos was launched when four Mexican journalists were kidnapped by drug traffickers last June and were lated released because of the public outcry. But what makes the new hashtag interesting is that it is backed by three of the most important cartoonists in a country where the political cartoon is de riguer. Important reporters and analysts have changed the profiles on Facebook and twitter avatars to the one created by the three cartoonists.
“There is a lot of unhappiness in the country. A lot f people are fed up and desperate but feel impotent”, Rius, one of Mexico´s most important cartoonists, told the weekly Proceso. It could not be phrased better. A recent poll determined that 60 percent of all Mexicans feel that last year was one of the most violent years in the four year drug war declared by President Felipe Calderon.
Mexico’s Christmas and new year were marked with grisly crimes. One was the abduction on 31 December of a woman accused of being a kidnapper who was herself grabbed from police as she was taken from a women´s prison to a hospital for a checkup. Her body was later found, half-naked and hanging from an overpass in the city of Monterrey.
This week, police found 15 decapitated bodies in the resort town of Acapulco.
This morning 350,000 Facebook users vanished into a black hole. Facebook banned Popolo Viola’s page (Purple People), the organisers of the biggest anti-Berlusconi protest, only to reverse its decision this afternoon.
One of the pages administrators expressed his suspicions about the page’s closure, noting it happened “just as the Purple People was organising the protests tomorrow, December 14, during the vote of confidence to [Italian Prime Minister Silvio) Berlusconi,”
The Purple People movement, born and bred on the web, has attracted hundreds of thousands of keen followers. After the first No Berlusconi Day protest, which took place just over a year ago, its popularity spread. Now the grass-roots organisation has a huge network of local organisations in Italy and abroad (there is even a London branch).
The reasons for the Facebook blackout are still unknown. The page’s administrators say “We are waiting to get to know the motivations of what happened. We will keep you informed about the developments”.
The activists themselves speculated that the outage could be linked to tomorrow’s vote of confidence in the Italian parliament. A vote that could cost Berlusconi his presidency. Last week, leaked Wikileaks cables revealed that Berlusconi was worried about the activists, whom he defined “extremists to be kept under control”. Although others, including a reporter at Fatto Quotidiano newspaper, suggested that internal quarrels within the Purple People caused the temporary suspension.
