How Effective Are Free Speech Campaigns?
First posted over at the English PEN site. In her monthly column for MediaShift, Jillian York (Director of International Free Expression at the EFF, and a Global Voices board member) turned her...
View ArticleEnemies of the Internet
This week, Reporters Sans Frontiers published their 2013 Enemies of the Internet report. It begins: My computer was arrested before I was.“ This perceptive comment was made by a Syrian activist who...
View ArticleThoughts on Syria
I have yet to post anything on Syria, and what the international response should be to the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons. This omission is mainly because I was away when the House of Commons...
View ArticleThe Outliers
I have worked for (and with) some courageous people at English PEN. I am often struck by the personal cost of exercising your right to free expression, and how damaging to life and finances taking...
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A modest proposal to improve the tabloid press a notch
Alan Hemming has been murdered in Syria. What a disgusting, inhumane act. Few of us have much faith in the tabloids to show much restraint in these situations. I bet tomorrow's papers are so prurient...
View ArticleThese jihadi brides are fully culpable victims
Even the briefest Internet search shows the reality of life under IS = mass murder, torture, enslavement, rape. Remember their real victims — Sarah Wollaston MP (@sarahwollaston) February 22, 2015...
View ArticleMazen Darwish is Free
English PEN today received formal confirmation that all charges against the Syrian journalist and writer Mazen Darwish have been dropped. He is a free man. Darwish is the founder of the Syrian Center...
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On the ethics of publishing the photo of Aylan Kurdi
Before I mire myself in questions of when and whether to publish shocking images, I should—must—begin by writing about the fact of Aylan Kurdi’s drowning and the refugee crisis in general. If the...
View ArticleWhy we shouldn’t execute Islamic State militants with air-strikes
Yesterday, the Prime Minister re-announced that his Government had targeted British citizens with missiles fired from RAF drones. Two men are dead. The Sun and others have cheered the news. Others...
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