5 posts tagged “freedom of speech”

The folks behind the Free Fouad website have asked if anyone had participated in the day of blogging silence on January 6. I believe that they do want a link where the campaign banner was (which I forgot to mention on the day, unfortunately, in my haste to join in). Still, maybe recording your blog URL there in the comments might not be a bad idea so they know who had participated.

Fouad Alfarhan is a Saudi blogger who has been writing to advocate greater freedom in his country. He was arrested without charge on December 11. Some bloggers have gotten together to deem today (Sunday, January 6) a day of silence, so after this post, I will not blog publicly for 24 hours. Please tell other bloggers if you feel you should, or observe the day’s silence if you wish to join in this campaign.

Ooh, I love it. The usual Red technique of scaring people from having free speech.
   Mr Andrew Moore has set up a website called Don’t Vote Labour. Whether you agree with Mr Moore or not, he has a right to express his political view. He is not endorsing any particular candidate: he just wants Labour out of power.
   The media are trying to make him feel bad for expressing his view, as far as I can tell. The stories are all over the news today: Mr Moore, they say, will be investigated by the Electoral Commission as his site could be a breach of the Electoral Finance Act 2007, which covers, inter alia, website communications. Judge for yourself and see if this is the gist of the articles, which are making out like something very terrible has taken place.
   Bollocks.
   Not only has Mr Moore not heard from the Electoral Commission, the Commission spokesman contacted by the NZPA suggests that no investigation has even taken place. Read his quotation carefully. Nothing has happened yet.
   There is more nothingness to the article than in an episode of Seinfeld.
   Some pro-government journalist probably stumbled on the website and decided to make life hard for Mr Moore and hoped to scare him into taking it down.
   The effect is that it has popularized it: the media have done all the marketing for him.
   We have to be very careful about reading these articles and whether something is in the past or future tense.
   I say that Mr Moore’s site does not even fit in to the requirements of an election advertisement under s. 5 of the Act.
   Any prosecution would have to be under s. 5 (1) (a):

(1) In this Act, election advertisement—
   (a) means any form of words or graphics, or both, that can reasonably be regarded as doing 1 or more of the following:
      (i) encouraging or persuading voters to vote, or not to vote, for 1 or more specified parties or for 1 or more candidates or for any combination of such parties and candidates:

but if that were the be all and end all, subs. (2) would not exist.
   I reckon that the site is excepted. If it’s considered a news media internet site (a wider and wider definition these days), then it fits under s. 5 (2) (d):

(2) The following are not election advertisements: …
   (d) any editorial material, other than advertising material, published on a news media Internet site that is written by, or selected by or with the authority of, the editor or person responsible for the Internet site solely for the purpose of informing, enlightening, or entertaining readers:

or how about paragraph (g)?

   (g) the publication by an individual, on a non-commercial basis, on the Internet of his or her personal political views (being the kind of publication commonly known as a blog).

It’s not a blog but one can easily make an argument on why Parliament put that part in parentheses.
   I’d happily swear that Mr Moore, with his site, is doing no more and no less than what a regular blogger might, and he should not be penalized just for being smarter with his web design skills. He’s simply organized his opinions better so we can see access them rather than trawl through dozens of posts to get them all.
   For years I worked on websites and put up what might amount to blog entries in 2008—but I did them in good ol’ HTML and made them look like regular web pages because I don’t always think the blog æsthetic looks nice.
   Mr Moore shouldn’t be penalized on his tastes, either.
   And, let’s face it, if you manually typed in dontvotelabour.org.nz as I did, you are pretty sure what political position the site has taken. Or if you clicked on the link here. Mr Moore is not shoving his website down our throats—which makes it just like a blog that we have to access ourselves. This is not from a push medium like TV or print.
   I think any judge analysing the rationale of why words under s. 5 (2) (g) are parenthesized would come to a conclusion that Parliament meant for a wider definition and that those words are merely a guide.
   And before you think I am launching into Labour, I would have written a similar post defending a webmaster who set up a Don’t Vote National or Don’t Vote Greens website.

Here’s one going around the blogosphere, courtesy of my friend and colleague Patrick Harris in London. The basic story: dude gets bad service from company. Blogs about it. Company decides to get revenge by signing him up to heterosexual and homosexual dating sites, including writing derogatory profiles about him. He blogs about that and manages to do a reverse DNS look-up to trace the sign-ups back to the company. Company sends lawyers’ letters demanding he take the blog posts down and threatens to sick the cops on him.
   The company is Sky Handling Partners. Read more at Damien Mulley’s blog about this sorry-ass case of bad customer relations. And bravo to Mr Mulley for his insistence in keeping his blog posts up.
   I hope the Gardai do get involved and haul this company over the rocks for fraud. Mr Mulley, I hope, will consider dragging Sky Handling to the Irish courts for libel.

[Cross-posted] The press release says it all, really. No one voted in the Communist Chinese as the government of New Zealand, even if a lot of us voted Labour. Pity that some of our senior government figures and cops decided to take their orders from Beijing, or are too scared to confront the Politburo when given the chance.

Publisher outraged at barring of Nick Wang from Parliamentary event

Jack Yan reminds Red Chinese that their sovereignty ends at Embassy doors

Wellington, March 27 (JY&A Media) Jack Yan, publisher of Lucire, says he is ‘outraged’ by the barring of journalist Nick Wang from a Parliamentary event last night, and says it is among a ‘pattern’ of suppression that the New Zealand Government is either ignoring, or endorsing.
   Earlier reports indicate that Red Chinese Embassy officials had pressured Marie McNicholas, the head of the Parliamentary Press Gallery, to bar Mr Wang from reporting on the visit of Zeng Peiyan (Tsang Pui Yam, 曾培炎), an official from Beijing. Mrs McNicholas refused, and told Radio New Zealand that officials may have approached members of the New Zealand police force.
   ‘We generally have some of the best police officers in the world,’ says Mr Yan. ‘The Red Chinese government needs to understand that they do not have the right to give orders to our cops, especially not the right to suppress a New Zealand-based journalist in the course of his job.
   ‘This is New Zealand territory, and diplomatic missions are here by convention, not by right.
   ‘Red Chinese sovereignty ends at their Embassy’s doors. They do not extend on to New Zealand soil,’ he says. ‘Why certain MPs like Peter Dunne and I have to remind Beijing of this, constantly, is beyond me.’
   Both the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister are saying the incident is a misunderstanding which has been blown out of proportion.
   ‘A free press and New Zealand sovereignty deserve to be protected, and if the Government believes either can be so readily dismissed, then they are ignoring, or endorsing, a pattern of Politburo pressure,’ says Mr Yan.
   ‘Red China’s actions, once again, make me question their understanding of other nations’ rights, and why we should even pursue a free-trade deal with a régime that does not respect New Zealanders or New Zealand jobs.’
   Mr Yan says that he has found Mr Wang to be a fair and balanced journalist, who has never been staunchly anti-Beijing in his reports in the Capital Chinese News.
   Mr Yan adds that he was disappointed that the Leader of the Opposition, John Key, did not raise the matter with Mr Zeng in his meeting earlier today, and questions why no other MP with Chinese ethnicity has publicly stood by Mr Wang.