free speech - Quaker Ranter https://www.quakerranter.org A Weekly Newsletter and Blog from Martin Kelley Tue, 06 Dec 2016 22:05:22 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0.2 https://i0.wp.com/www.quakerranter.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/cropped-qr-512.jpg?fit=32%2C32&ssl=1 free speech - Quaker Ranter https://www.quakerranter.org 32 32 16720591 This is how free speech gets shut down. #BoeingGate https://www.quakerranter.org/this-is-how-free-speech-gets-shut-down-boeinggate/ https://www.quakerranter.org/this-is-how-free-speech-gets-shut-down-boeinggate/#respond Tue, 06 Dec 2016 22:05:22 +0000 http://www.quakerranter.org/?p=56953 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.

]]> https://www.quakerranter.org/this-is-how-free-speech-gets-shut-down-boeinggate/feed/ 0 56953 Feds targeting activists at airports https://www.quakerranter.org/feds_targeting_activists_at_ai/ https://www.quakerranter.org/feds_targeting_activists_at_ai/#comments Fri, 25 Jul 2003 18:02:07 +0000 http://www.quakerranter.org/?p=425 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 Nonviolence.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.

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