Pacific Standard July-August 2013 Cover

Here Is Pussy Riot Member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova’s Parole Hearing Speech. She Was Denied.

April 30, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
pussy-riot

Four days ago, a court in the impossibly-named Russian region of Mordovia—recently famous for wooing French actor/tax fugitive Gerard Depardieu—refused parole for Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, better-known as one of three members of Russian punk protest outfit Pussy Riot. Tolokonnikova received a two-year sentence for her participation in a protest in Moscow's main Orthodox church last year. (We spoke at the time to a Russia expert, who gave us some context around the Pussy Riot phenomenon. Read the interview here.) Apparently Tolokonnikova had drafted a statement before the court, but was ... Read More

More like this: Legal Affairs, Politics
Tags: , , , ,

The FCC and Indecency: Here We Go Again

December 29, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

“It is a violation of federal law to air obscene programming at any time. It is also a violation of federal law to air indecent programming or profane language during certain hours...The courts have held that indecent material is protected by the First Amendment and cannot be banned entirely. It may, however, be restricted in order to avoid its broadcast during times of the day when there is a reasonable risk that children may be in the audience.” — The Federal Communications Commission In 1973, a public radio station in New York City broadcast comedian George Carlin’s “Seven ... Read More

More like this: Legal Affairs
Tags: , , , , ,

Book Banners Finding Power in Numbers

February 10, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

On the website Parents Against Bad Books In Schools, some of the works deemed "sensitive, inappropriate and controversial" for K-12 students, even those who are college-bound or in advanced placement classes, include Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses, Richard Wright's Black Boy, Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. "Bad is not for us to determine," says the disclaimer on the site. "Bad is what you determine is bad." One of the purposes of PABBIS.org, the disclaimer goes on to say, is to "provide information related to bad ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Culture & Society
Tags: , , , ,

Censorship in Shades of Black and Gray

December 4, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
John Kampfner

The London-based Index on Censorship wanders the world in defense of freedom of expression, from repressive regimes where its contacts can't even name themselves publicly to courtrooms where Twittering wags face hard time. Founded to uphold basic freedom for writers being squashed by the then-Warsaw Pact nations, Index has evolved into a sprightly academic journal, a savvy website and a campaigner against abuses everywhere. But John Kampfner, its chief executive since 2008, doesn't see these issues in the stark black and whites of so many campaigners for human rights, but more in grays, a ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Legal Affairs
Tags: , , ,