FireInATheater.com

Update: The charges detailed in the post below have been dropped. (See story below the jump.)

In another European, Nazi-related blow to free speech, a “left-wing German politician has filed charges against online encyclopedia Wikipedia for promoting the use of banned Nazi symbols in Germany,” Reuters reports.

Wikipedia? Apparently the German-language version of the site featured too much Nazi symbolism in an article on the Hitler Youth. (Currently, the only symbol featured in the article is a lone swastika which links to the Wiki on Naziism.)

But while the display of Nazi symbols is prohibited in Germany, there is an exception for artistic or educational use.  Clearly Wikipedia’s use of the symbols is educational. It is, after all, an encyclopedia.

But “’[t]he extent and frequency of the symbols on it goes beyond what is needed for documentation and political education, in my view,’ [the politician] told Reuters. ‘This isn't about restricting freedom of opinion, it's about examining what the limits are.’"

The problems with that proposition are that if there are limits to permissible opinion, then there is no freedom of opinion and that the issues here really is speech, not opinion. And speech too, if limited, can never be free.

More news after the jump.
[Reuters]

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) asked a Superior Court judge in New Jersey [last week] to preserve the free speech rights of an anonymous blogger facing legal threats from local government officials.

The blogger, writing as "daTruthSquad" on a site hosted on Google's Blogspot service, has criticized a controversial lawsuit filed by the township of Manalapan, as well as the officials who decided to pursue the case. The township subpoenaed Google for "daTruthSquad's" identity -- as well as for any emails, blog drafts, and other information Google has about the blogger -- claiming that the defendant in the case is actually writing the posts. The defendant, however, has already sworn under penalty of perjury that he is not "daTruthSquad."
…
In a motion to quash the subpoena filed [last week], EFF asked the court to block the township's attempt to uncover the identity of "daTruthSquad" and allow the blogger to continue to write about this or any other issue without being forced to identity him or herself.

Cuban security forces detained up to 15 dissidents after storming into a church's parish hall to stop an anti-government protest, the church's priest and a dissident group said Wednesday, accusing authorities of repression.

The priest of Santa Teresita church in Santiago de Cuba, Jose Conrad, said at least five people were detained during the crackdown on Tuesday, while a leading dissident group said 15 were rounded up by police.

"They barged in spraying gas in the faces of people from those spray cans, and went about dishing out blows and shouting," Conrad told AFP by telephone.