This is how free speech gets shut down. #BoeingGate

December 6, 2016

Ear­li­er today Don­ald Trump tweet­ed that Boe­ing was spend­ing $4 bil­lion dol­lars to ren­o­vate Air Force One. He was off the facts by orders of mag­ni­tude but that does­n’t mean he did­n’t know knew exact­ly what he was doing. It’s time we stop try­ing to read his tweets as exer­cis­es in truth find­ing. It does­n’t mat­ter if Trump did­n’t know or did­n’t care about his num­bers: With author­i­tar­i­ans, we must fol­low the effects, not the logic.

Trump’s tweet came less than half an hour after the Chica­go Tri­bune post­ed a few short quotes from the Boe­ing CEO say­ing they were con­cerned about the impli­ca­tions of trade with Chi­na under a Trump Admin­is­tra­tion. It was rel­a­tive­ly tame stuff and of course a multi­na­tion­al with bil­lions of dol­lars in Chi­na is going to be con­cerned. About a quar­ter of their air­crafts are built for the Chi­nese market.

But fol­low not the log­ic but the effect: if you crit­i­cize this pres­i­dent in pub­lic he will destroy your share­hold­er val­ue. Boe­ing lost half a bil­lion dol­lars in val­ue fol­low­ing Trump’s 140 char­ac­ters. Every CEO in Amer­i­ca will now have to think twice before speak­ing to the press. It would be fis­cal­ly irre­spon­si­ble to do oth­er­wise. A few quotes in a paper isn’t worth that amount of share­hold­er value.

Free speech isn’t just court cas­es or a few lines in the Con­sti­tu­tion. Even the CEOs of the largest cor­po­ra­tions in Amer­i­ca need to watch their tongues. Silenc­ing has begun.

Feds targeting activists at airports

July 25, 2003

There is now some hard evi­dence in the charges that the fed­er­al agency over­see­ing air­lines has com­piled a list that tar­gets and har­rass­es activists. A Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act request has not turned up the names or who they rep­re­sent but has dis­cov­ered that the list itself is 88 pages long.
There have been a num­ber of activists who have expe­ri­ence extra scruti­ny and spe­cial search­es, espe­cial­ly in the San Fran­cis­co and Oak­land air­ports. The FOIA case, filed by the North­ern Cal­i­for­nia ACLU, is the first to start shed­ding light on the prac­tice. Dis­sent is always chal­lenged as unpa­tri­ot­ic in times of war and scan­dal. Con­trary to the opin­ions of the many cranks who write in to Non​vi​o​lence​.org, it’s not the mil­i­tary who has ever pro­tect­ed our right to free speech – it’s groups like the ACLU fight­ing to bring harass­ment to pub­lic attention.