Fecklessness on Free Speech

Bridget Johnson has written a great essay for National Review Online, in which she takes the Bush Administration and United Nations to task for not resolutely defending free expression:

The U.S. Mission to the United Nations hosted a panel discussion the same day — for which I was the moderator — discussing threats to Internet free-speech worldwide. The fliers prepared by the office to advertise the panel featured an image of a news brief about the four-year prison sentence for blogger Abdel Kareem Nabil Soliman — datelined, of course, Egypt.

The U.S. was asked to remove the word “Egypt,” said deputy spokeswoman Carolyn Vadino, lest they offend a member state. After the mission refused to edit the fliers, approval to post the fliers was denied by U.N. officials on the grounds that they were only approving postings for “cultural events.”

Was someone afraid that people might find out that vaunted countries in the big, happy family of member states actually do bad things?


Please read the rest:

Free Speech Is Not Peripheral