Tag: World War I
Afghanistan Women Propaganda Comes Directly from 1917 Creel CPI Campaign + More Afghan News
[2012] It’s Time to Stop Using the ‘Fire in a Crowded Theater’ Quote
Posted more for my own reference, as I still see people quoting “fire in a crowded theater” while advocating for censorship.
It’s Time to Stop Using the ‘Fire in a Crowded Theater’ Quote
In 1969, the Supreme Court’s decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio effectively overturned Schenck and any authority the case still carried. There, the Court held that inflammatory speech–and even speech advocating violence by members of the Ku Klux Klan–is protected under the First Amendment, unless the speech “is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action” (emphasis mine).
Today, despite the “crowded theater” quote’s legal irrelevance, advocates of censorship have not stopped trotting it out as thefinal word on the lawful limits of the First Amendment. As Rottman wrote, for this reason, it’s “worse than useless in defining the boundaries of constitutional speech. When used metaphorically, it can be deployed against any unpopular speech.” Worse, its advocates are tacitly endorsing one of the broadest censorship decisions ever brought down by the Court. It is quite simply, as Ken White calls it, “the most famous and pervasive lazy cheat in American dialogue about free speech.”
How McCarthyism and the Red Scare Hurt the Black Freedom Struggle
Support the Tropes
If well-paid US columnists start becoming preoccupied with human rights in your country, it is a pretty good sign that you are about to get bombed. It is also remarkable how quickly those same pundits will lose their acute interest in human rights in a nation after a US intervention. Therefore, the next time you hear freedom, human rights and democracy in another country being endlessly discussed, be on your guard for ulterior motives; these cold-blooded media figures may just be crying crocodile tears in the service of empire.
Free-dumb and Demon-ocracy!
Passports Were a “Temporary” War Measure
Neither Washington Nor Beijing?
Neither Washington Nor Beijing?
Regardless of what one thinks of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, anyone on the left must support China against US-led imperialist attacks and the New Cold War. The prominent Belgian Trotskyist economist Ernest Mandel was by no means a supporter of Soviet socialism, but he insisted firmly that the Soviet Union must be defended against imperialism. Arguing against Tony Cliff’s slogan of Neither Washington nor Moscow, he wrote: “Why, if it is conceivable to defend the SPD [German Social Democratic Party] against fascism, despite its being led by the Noskes, the assassins of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, is it ‘inconceivable’ to defend the USSR against imperialism?”111
Related:
Return of the Leviathan: The Fascist Roots of the CIA and the True Origin of the Cold War
WHOSE INTEREST DID THE CREATION OF THE COLD WAR SERVE AND CONTINUES TO SERVE? CYNTHIA CHUNG ADDRESSES THIS QUESTION IN HER THREE-PART SERIES
Return of the Leviathan: The Fascist Roots of the CIA and the True Origin of the Cold War
President Biden Plans a Foreign Policy for the Middle Class: He Should Promote Peace, Which Would Benefit Them and Everyone Else
Still, wanting one’s foreign policy to serve the middle class – and the working class, and the entrepreneurial class, and everyone else – isn’t necessarily a bad way to evaluate foreign policy. However, rather than trying to turn everything into an economic measure, there is a much simpler approach that would fulfill the same goal. Follow a policy of peace. Ultimately, more is required for a sophisticated, comprehensive foreign policy. However, the best, most solid, ultimately essential, foundation is peace.
Admittedly, Biden, as well as Sullivan and the others, have been in Washington, D.C. too long to know what peace actually is. Most policymakers call today’s world “peacetime” even though the US has been at war for the last two decades. The Blob appears to define peace as meaning that there is no combat on American soil. Washington can be droning, bombing, invading, and occupying other nations, and denizens of the imperial capital will contend that there is no war going on. Certainly no “endless” war, insist the Neocons, who recognize their serious loss of credibility in having repeatedly misled the public about both the cause and duration of conflicts.
For International Women’s Day March 8: Words of Clara Zetkin
Wisconsin Bail Out the People Movement by Elsa Rassbach
For the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day, here’s a clip from my 1972 film, “His/story” (which I made as a student in Germany) about the legendary German socialist and feminist, Clara Zetkin, and her visit to the Soviet Union in 1920.
For International Women’s Day March 8: Words of Clara Zetkin
Related:
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