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The words of this language are to refer to what only the speaker can know — to his immediate private sensations. So another person cannot understand the language. — Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (more…)
Deputy PM Dominic Raab wants to assure you that free speech will be given “trump card status” under the UK’s controversial Online Safety Bill.
Deputy PM Dominic Raab wants to assure you that free speech will be given “trump card status” under the UK’s controversial Online Safety Bill.
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Ukraine? The brochure looks nice
It is not clear that the British government quite understands the habits of the mercenary soldier. After its dithering Foreign Secretary Liz Truss indicated that British citizens were free, should they so wish, to go to Ukraine and fight against Russia, she sympathized with these would-be Lord Byrons. Her staff reminded both her and the men ‘o war of the latest travel advice on its website: (more…)
Nadine Dorries, the UK’s Digital Secretary, says the new law will “make the UK the safest place in the world to be online while enshrining free speech.”
Nadine Dorries, the UK’s Digital Secretary, says the new law will “make the UK the safest place in the world to be online while enshrining free speech.”
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John Stuart Mill, in On Liberty, provides us with a brief crime report from the nineteenth century:
Penalties for opinion, or at least for its expression, still exist by law; and their enforcement is not, even in these times, so unexampled as to make it at all incredible that they may some day be revived in full force. In the year 1857, at the summer assizes of the county of Cornwall, an unfortunate man, said to be of unexceptionable conduct in all relations of life, was sentenced for 21 months’ imprisonment, for uttering, and writing on a gate, some offensive words concerning Christianity. (more…)