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KGW 7:36 PM. PDT May 29, 2017

Rally organizer Joey Gibson (in yellow hat) (Photo: courtesy Joey Gibson)

PORTLAND, Ore. -- After Mayor Ted Wheeler announced Monday that the city will not issue permits to alt-right groups for two planned June rallies in Portland, the organizer of one of the rallies said that move could make the event more dangerous.

Joey Gibson is organizing a rally on June 4 and has already received a permit for the event at Shrunk Plaza from the federal government, which controls the downtown park. A second rally is scheduled for June 10 but is not yet permitted.

Wheeler called for the federal government to cancel permits already issued to alt-right groups for the rallyon June 4, and asked organizers to cancel both June events.

During a press conference Monday, Wheeler said the rallies had no place in Portland, following the deaths of two men at the hands of Jeremy Christian, a self-proclaimed White Supremacist who has attended alt-right rallies in the past, including one organized by Gibson.

"Im reminded constantly that they have a first amendment right to speak," he said. "My pushback on that is hate speech is not protected under the U.S. Constitution."

Gibson, who runs the group Patriot Prayer, said he is a Libertarian and does not promote hate speech.

I promote freedom. I promote love and I promote bringing spirituality back into this country," he said.

Gibson said if the permit is revoked, the event could be more dangerous. He said he won't be able to kick people out if they're causing problems.

Christian was kicked out of a prior Patriot Prayer demonstration, Gibson said.

Jeremy Christian has nothing to do with us and nothing to do with our movement, he said.

Gibson said no matter what happens, people will be showing up for the June 4 rally. He said some are even flying in from out of town. He plans to meet with Mayor Wheeler on Tuesday.

The ACLU of Oregon said Wheeler's request is unconstitutional.

Despite the brutal nature of Christian's attack and the racist vitriol that precededit,ACLU of Oregondirector Mat dos Santos said that "government censorship is not the answer."

Our hearts are broken, but government censorship is not the answer. We must defend the constitution even when it is uncomfortable. https://t.co/7K33oLAbcZ

The ACLU of Oregon posted more on its Twitter page, saying "the government cannot revoke or deny a permit based on the viewpoint of the demonstrators. Period."

The organization said if there is evidence of an imminent threat, the government should address it "without restricting 1A rights of all."

If the government has concrete evidence of an imminent threat they can and should address it, without restricting 1A rights of all. https://t.co/jfxgJyvCpi

Portland GOP chair James Buchalhad a different take. Buchal told The Guardian that militia groups such as the ThreePercenters (some of whom were involved in the takeover of an Oregon wildlife refuge last year) should be used as security at public events.

Wheeler called for the event cancelations via his Facebook page:

On Friday three men Rick Best, Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, and Micah Fletcher stood up against bigotry and hatred. Two paid with their lives. A third was seriously injured.

Our community remains in shock and mourning. But we are also tremendously grateful to our heroes and their families for their selflessness and heroism. They will serve to inspire us to be the loving, courageous people we are meant to be.

As Mayor, I wanted to update you on a few developments:

1) I have reached out to all of the victims and their families, including the two women who were terrorized and subjected to such hatred and bigotry. I have offered my unconditional assistance and support, day or night.

2) I have confirmed that the City of Portland has NOT and will not issue any permits for the alt right events scheduled on June 4th or June 10th. The Federal government controls permitting for Shrunk Plaza, and it is my understanding that they have issued a permit for the event on June 4th.

3) I am calling on the federal government to IMMEDIATELY REVOKE the permit(s) they have issued for the June 4th event and to not issue a permit for June 10th. Our City is in mourning, our communitys anger is real, and the timing and subject of these events can only exacerbate an already difficult situation.

4) I am appealing to the organizers of the alt-right demonstrations to CANCEL the events they have scheduled on June 4th and June 10th. I urge them to ask their supporters to stay away from Portland. There is never a place for bigotry or hatred in our community, and especially not now.

5) I am calling on every elected leader in Oregon, every legal agency, every level of law enforcement to stand with me in preventing another tragedy.

6) When and if the time is right for them, I would like to work with the families to find an appropriate way to permanently remember their sacrifice and honor their courage. Their heroism is now part of the legacy of this great city and I want future generations to remember what happened here, and why, so that it might serve to both eradicate hatred and inspire future generations to stand up for the right values like Rick, Taliesin, and Micah did last week.

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Rally organizer: Revoking permit could make event more dangerous - kgw.com

The Center for Biological Diversity sued the Trump administration Tuesday to uncover public records showing that federal employees have been censored from using words or phrases related to climate change in formal agency communications.

Tuesday's lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, DC, seeks to require four federal agencies to release climate-censorship records, in compliance with the Freedom of Information Act. The U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Department of the Interior and U.S. Department of State have failed to provide records requested by the Center for Biological Diversity or indicate when they might do so, violating deadlines established under the law.

"The Trump administration's refusal to release public information about its climate censorship continues a dangerous and illegal pattern of anti-science denial," said Taylor McKinnon at the Center for Biological Diversity. "Just as censorship won't change climate science, foot-dragging and cover-ups won't be tolerated under the public records law."

On March 30 the Center for Biological Diversity filed Freedom of Information Act requests for all directives or communications barring or removing climate-related words or phrases from any formal agency communications. The records requests followed news reports that federal agencies had removed climate information from government websites and instructed Department of Energy staff to avoid using the phrases "climate change," "emissions reductions" and "Paris agreement."

The Center for Biological Diversity has filed identical requests with the Council on Environmental Quality, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

On March 23 the Center for Biological Diversity joined conservation biologist Stuart Pimm and the Center for Media and Democracy in a separate Freedom of Information Act request to prevent the administration from removing hundreds of environmental data sets on government websites.

Under the Freedom of Information Act, when federal agencies receive requests for the same records three or more times, they must make the records freely available to the public on their websitesa rule known as "the Beetlejuice provision."

Records responsive to the Center for Biological Diversity's climate censorship requests will be made available to the public and the media.

Excerpt from:
Trump Sued for Censorship of Climate Change Data - EcoWatch

"Knowledge is power," as the old saying goes, so it's no surprise that Wikipediaone of the largest repositories of general knowledge ever createdis a frequent target of government censorship around the world. In Turkey, Wikipedia articles about female genitals have been banned; Russia has censored articles about weed; in the UK, articles about German metal bands have been blocked; in China, the entire site has been banned on multiple occasions.

Determining how to prevent these acts of censorship has long been a priority for the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, and thanks to new research from the Harvard Center for Internet and Society, the foundation seems to have found a solution: encryption.

In 2011, Wikipedia added support for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS), which is the encrypted version of its predecessor HTTP. Both of these protocols are used to transfer data from a website's server to the browser on your computer, but when you try to connect to a website using HTTPS, your browser will first ask the web server to identify itself. Then the server will send its unique public key which is used by the browser to create and encrypt a session key. This session key is then sent back to the server which it decrypts with its private key. Now all data sent between the browser and server is encrypted for the remainder of the session.

"The decision to shift to HTTPS has been a good one in terms of ensuring accessibility to knowledge."

In short, HTTPS prevents governments and others from seeing the specific page users are visiting. For example, a government could tell that a user is browsing Wikipedia, but couldn't tell that the user is specifically reading the page about Tiananmen Square.

The researchers saw a sharp drop in traffic to the Chinese language Wikipedia around May 19, 2015, indicating a censorship event. This did in fact turn out to be the casethe site had been blocked in anticipation of the upcoming anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Image: Harvard

Up until 2015, Wikipedia offered its service using both HTTP and HTTPS, which meant that when countries like Pakistan or Iran blocked the certain articles on the HTTP version of Wikipedia, the full version would still be available using HTTPS. But in June 2015, Wikipedia decided to axe HTTP access and only offer access to its site with HTTPS. The thinking was that this would force the hand of restrictive governments when it came to censorshipdue to how this protocol works, governments could no longer block individual Wikipedia entries. It was an all or nothing deal.

Critics of this plan argued that this move would just result in more total censorship of Wikipedia and that access to some information was better than no information at all. But Wikipedia stayed the course, at least partly because its co-founder Jimmy Wales is a strong advocate for encryption. Now, new research from Harvard shows that Wales' intuition was correctfull encryption did actually result in a decrease in censorship incidents around the world.

The Harvard researchers began by deploying an algorithm which detected unusual changes in Wikipedia's global server traffic for a year beginning in May 2015. This data was then combined with a historical analysis of the daily request histories for some 1.7 million articles in 286 different languages from 2011 to 2016 in order to determine possible censorship events. At the end of their year-long data collection, the Harvard researchers also did a client-side analysis, where they would try to access various Wikipedia articles in a variety of languages as they would be seen by a resident in a particular country.

Read More: Jimmy Wales to China After Blocking Wikipedia: I Can Outwait You

After a painstakingly long process of manual analysis of potential censorship events, the researchers found that, globally, Wikipedia's switch to HTTPS had a positive effect on the number censorship events by comparing server traffic from before and after the switch in June of 2015.

Although countries like China, Thailand and Uzbekistan were still censoring part or all of Wikipedia by the time the researchers wrapped up their study, they remained optimistic: "this initial data suggests the decision to shift to HTTPS has been a good one in terms of ensuring accessibility to knowledge."

See the original post here:
Wikipedia's Switch to HTTPS Has Successfully Fought Government Censorship - Motherboard

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By Andrew Minik

Evanston, IL Northwestern University has become the latest battleground in the fight for free speech and academic liberty. Sociology professor Beth Redbird invited a public relations officer of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to participate in a lecture series on Inequality: Race, Class, and Power. To the activist organizations on campus, this invitation was unacceptable. I attended the protest to experience first hand the tactics employed by activists to silence professors.

MEChA, Black Lives Matter, Asian Pacific American Coalition, NU QTIPOC, NU Rainbow Alliance, and Immigrant Justice Project organized a protest to prevent the ICE representatives from attending the lecture. According to their official statement regardless of arresting power dialogue with any ICE official legitimizes their position as state actors of violence. The flier goes on to warn students that engaging with ICE creates harmful discourse that hinders critical conversation about state violence. Following a paragraph of fear mongering, the activist manifesto presents a list of demands ranging from an undocumented students resource center to simplifying the admissions process.

Flier posted to the official Facebook event

Protesters assembled around all entrances to Harris Hall on the Evanston campus. Blood stained banners reading No Human is Illegal and Stop Deportations were draped across the doors. As the crowd grew demonstrators scanned the area, prepared to stop ICE in any way necessary. ICE got in! an organizer yelled to her comrades. Frustrated, the crowd began a series of chants and speeches justifying their need to disrupt the university lecture. Unsatisfied with their failed wall, the activists marched into the building.

The coalition of activist organizations entered the foyer in front of the lecture hall. Once in place, two students with megaphones led the group in chants. ICE is a disruption, not a discussion and Fuck ICE, echoed through the building.

Assistant Vice President and Dean of Students Todd Adams arrived to plead with protesters to take their demonstration outside. Unmoved, the chanting continued. Dean Adams explained to protesters that professors are allowed a degree of academic freedom, and that the university is not in a position to prohibit speakers from campus. ICE is not good! responded an eloquent demonstrator.

Thirty minutes into the standoff, professor Redbird allowed the protesters to enter the lecture. Immediately upon entering a screaming match ensued between the demonstrators and professor Redbird. Several students fled the hall, some in tears. Professor Redbird grabbed a microphone, Enough! Class is dismissed. she yelled over the activists. You are not required to stay in this uncomfortable environment if you dont want to. I will stay and answer questions!

With the protesters unwilling or unable to posit a question, I raised my hand. Are there speakers on any subject you would feel uncomfortable presenting to your lecture?

Well, I have a problem with a class that censors before she could continue the activists screeched in disgust. The pattern of interrupting professor Redbird continued throughout the Q and A.

The protesters statements revealed a troubling belief system. This bubble where everything is going to be objective, that is erasure. That is violent. Demonstrators felt no distinction between physical and emotional harm. We are trying to make the case that its harmful either way. Its not worth putting a symbolic danger on campus for the purpose of understanding it.

Professor Redbird, a progressive and advocate for undocumented immigrants, found this assault on academic freedom troubling. My husband is an immigration lawyer and when the travel ban came down he rushed to the airport to help. He could help because he knew the law. Without that knowledge he cannot help anyone. I want you to speak up, but I want you to understand the power. Without that knowledge you will always be outsiders. It is easy to be outside when you are loved. You need that knowledge to survive. Before she could continue angered protesters interrupted.

She went on to explain that the outside world, their home, and places of recreation should be safe. However, the classroom is a place that should make you uncomfortable. Understanding the way society works is uncomfortable. There is no way to learn how it works without being uncomfortable. Frustrated, the students urged the need to censor violent opinions in the classroom.

It became clear the protesters held no regard for freedom of speech or freedom of thought. The activist community makes no distinction between physical violence and emotional violence. The ICE representatives held no arresting power. They are not allowed, by law, to carry out violent behavior. And yet, according to Daniel, a sophomore participating in the protest, We must confront the idea that all opinions are valid. Even that should have a limitation under free speech. To him the pursuit of education is not worth putting students in ideological danger.

Students in Redbirds course disagreed with the activists assault on their class. Rick, a freshman in economics, disapproved of the protests blatant disregard for our opportunity to learn and make change towards what the group was advocating for. He felt that the protest hijacked their class in order to make a statement against ICE.

It is clear that academic freedom is under siege on college campuses. Actions such as this have landed Northwestern on FIREs list of worst colleges for free speech. Students and professors on both sides of the political spectrum must continue to pursue knowledge, no matter how uncomfortable it may make students. The censorship of violent opinions presents a direct threat to freedom of speech. Campus activists and their crusade to censor professors is anti-intellectual and their willful ignorance of ideas must be confronted. The activist community remains dedicated to silencing educators by any means necessary. I recommend they build the next censorship wall ten feet taller.

Asian Pacific American CoalitionBeth RedbirdBlack Lives MatterCensorshipcollegefree speechICEImmigrant Justice ProjectimmigrationImmigration and Customs EnforcementMEChAnorthwestern universityNU QTIPOCNU Rainbow AllianceSJWsocial justiceTodd Adamsuniversity

See more here:
Northwestern Activists Build Censorship Wall, Storm Lecture Hall ... - The Libertarian Republic

Climate Home

Trump administration sued over climate change 'censorship' Climate Home The Trump administration's refusal to release public information about its climate censorship continues a dangerous and illegal pattern of anti-science denial, said Taylor McKinnon from the CBD. Just as censorship won't change climate science, ...

Continued here:
Trump administration sued over climate change 'censorship' - Climate Home