censorship

Oakland, Ca. (Special to Informed Comment) – Objection to teaching Critical Race Theory (which is anyway not taught at the K-12 level) and school boards banning books are evil Siamese Twins. Both arise from fear of knowledge, truth and candid assessment. Both are motivated by a desperation to preserve an old order and suppress the […]

censorship

Israeli Pegasus Spyware was used against Human Rights Watch Workers

Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch – (New York) – The targeting of a Human Rights Watch staff member with Pegasus spyware underscores the urgent need to regulate the global trade in surveillance technology, Human Rights Watch said today. Governments should ban the sale, export, transfer, and use of surveillance technology until human rights safeguards are in place. […]

Authoritarianism

Kazakhstan must Cancel Order for Troops to Shoot Protesters ‘Without Warning’ (Human Rights Watch)

Human Rights Watch

Ensure National and Foreign Forces Respect Rights; Investigate Killings

Authoritarianism

2021: a grim year for Free Speech as hundreds of Journalists are arrested in an increasingly authoritarian World

The Conversation

By Dina Matar | – Hundreds of journalists killed or arrested, rising numbers of female media workers targeted, floods of misinformation and hate speech and ineffectual or hostile governments unable or unwilling to protect the public’s right to know. The 2021 press freedom index released recently by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) makes for grim reading. […]

censorship

Justice: French arrest Man they believe to be Top Saudi Assassin of Journalist Jamal Khashoggi

Juan Cole

Update: French authorities have released the individual they apprehended on Tuesday. Read on for the significance of this attempted arrest of al-Otaibi. Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Rick Noack and Sarah Dadouch at The Washington Post report that French authorities arrested a Saudi man they believe to be Khalid Aedh al-Otaibi, a member of the […]

censorship

Yemeni journalist accused of spreading atheism is jailed for 15 years in Saudi Arabia

Brian Whitaker

( Al-Bab.com) – A Yemeni journalist has become the latest victim of Saudi Arabia’s laws against religious disbelief. Thirty-year-old Ali Muhsin Abu Lahoum worked in Sana’a for the Yemen Times before moving to Saudi Arabia in 2015 and taking up a job with a TV station. More recently he is said to have been working […]

censorship

Apple Sues Israeli gov’t-backed NSO Spyware Company: “Notorious Hackers – Amoral 21st C. Mercenaries”

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Apple is suing the NSO group, which produced the spyware that Israel uses to keep under surveillance the 5 million Palestinians it holds in thrall to its Occupation. The NSO group is believed to be close to the Israeli state. They have sold their hacking tools to repressive governments around […]

Authoritarianism

For First Time, US joins Brazil and India as “Backsliding Democracy”: GOP is making US a Third World Country

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Sweden’s International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance finds this year that the United States of America has joined the ranks of “backsliding democracies,” joining India, Brazil, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia. The IDEA institute notes, “Democratic backsliding, namely the sustained and deliberate process of subversion of basic democratic tenets by […]