Press freedom in Canada restricted in 2024, says U.S. State Dept. report

The U.S. State Department's annual global survey of human rights included "credible reports of serious restrictions on freedom of expression and press freedom" in Canada during 2024.  

2024 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Canada | U.S. Department of State | Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor | Executive Summary 

"There were no significant changes in the human rights situation in Canada during the year. Significant human rights issues included credible reports of serious restrictions on freedom of expression and media freedom, including unjustified arrests or prosecutions of journalists and activists.... The law provided for freedom of expression, including for members of the press and other media, and the government generally respected this right. An independent media, an effective judiciary, and a functioning democratic political system combined to promote freedom of expression, including for media members, although significant curtailments of press freedom remained.

• The law criminalized 'hate speech' in any public place and defined it as communication that incited hatred against any identifiable group where such incitement was likely to lead to a breach of the peace or communication that willfully promoted hatred against any identifiable group, other than in private conversation. The maximum penalty was two years’ imprisonment.
• The public media and majority of private media were substantially dependent on government sources of funding for their activities. Government intervention in the media market favored means of communication that did not diverge from government-suggested bounds of political speech, and government policy and practices often disadvantaged independent media. 
• The government used a variety of mechanisms to fund public and private sector media in the country, ranging from direct grants and tax credits to mandatory payments and funds collected from broadcasters, streaming services, and news platforms, but distributed or regulated by the government. News organizations faced direct and indirect pressure to conform their political speech in order to gain or maintain access to these funds, leading to self-censorship. Independent news organizations that did not take government funds faced a substantial market disadvantage.
• During the year, the Online News Act of 2023 came into force. The law required large digital media platforms pay news businesses when their content appeared on the platform. The law empowered the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission to set mandatory bargaining guidelines between platforms and news businesses and to otherwise enforce and set regulatory guidance for the act, including codes of conduct and eligibility of news businesses to participate, powers which could be used to discriminate against political speech or disfavored independent media outlets.
• In September, a Federal Court judge upheld the government’s decision to disqualify an independent news organization from journalism tax credits. The organization was one of the few in the country that produced critical reporting on the government’s response to protests of the COVID-19 lockdowns.
• In March, the government announced a grant of 58.8 million Canadian dollars (CAD) ($43.2 million) to extend the Local Journalism Initiative to 2027 that funded media organizations to hire journalists or pay freelance journalists to produce civic journalism for “underserved communities” across the country. The funding brought total government support for initiative to CAD 94.7 million ($69.6 million) over eight years since its launch in 2019. Independent media organizations without access to these funds faced increased market pressure. The Changing Narrative Fund revenue stream of the initiative, announced during the year, prioritized funding for hiring journalists in the 'Indigenous, Black, racialized, ethno-religious minority, people with disabilities and 2SLGBTQI+ communities,' discriminating against journalists who fell outside of these favored categories.
• In January, Edmonton police arrested Indigenous journalist Brandi Morin on assignment with Ricochet Media for obstruction for conducting interviews with residents at an Indigenous-led homeless encampment when police arrived to dismantle the encampment. Police detained Morin for several hours, although Morin had identified herself as a journalist. Authorities dropped charges against Morin in  March after prosecutors determined no public interest was served in pursuing the case.
• In May, a member of parliament of the governing party and other officials allegedly attempted to use supposed security threats to impose unreasonably high security charges (more than the costs of the events otherwise) on two independent media organizations’ events. The organizations alleged that they were targeted for their political speech and had a lawsuit pending.
• Rather than participate in government-mandated bargaining, some American digital platforms announced that they would no longer make news content available to Canadian users, leading to substantial censorship of news content including local news content. The opposition party described the Online News Act as a government censorship law, because of its effects on the character and quality of the country’s news reporting.

Chris Barber and Tamara Lich. CBC photos.

• A trial of two organizers of the 2022 'Freedom Convoy' concluded during the year. A verdict was still pending at year’s end. In response to the 2022 convoy (which protested draconian lockdown measures that substantially damaged the communities and economic livelihoods of many Canadians), the government took the unprecedented step of invoking the Emergencies Act, leading to large-scale social media censorship and debanking. In January, the Federal Court ruled that the government’s imposition of the Emergencies Act was unreasonable and violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The federal government appealed the decision.
• The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) continued its legal efforts to block an independent news outlet’s Access to Information request for CBC’s communications with American social media platform Twitter (now X) dating to 2018. The news outlet previously published investigative reporting alleging that the CBC exerted pressure on Twitter/X to censor it and other disfavored news outlets over political speech.

Read more: https://www.state.gov/reports/2024-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/canada

Ex-teacher can sue school board, Ont. judge rules

An Ontario Superior Court judge has ruled that a former Waterloo teacher, who was suspended and investigated after her local School Board accused her of violating the province's Human Rights Code, can sue the Board for defamation. 

Ex-teacher silenced for book views can proceed with lawsuit against Waterloo region board after court ruling | CBC News | Kate Bueckert:

November 27, 2023 - "A defamation case by a retired teacher who was removed from a 2022 meeting for speaking on the age appropriateness of books can now proceed against the Waterloo Region District School Board following an Ontario judge's ruling. On Thursday, Superior Court Justice J.A. Ramsay dismissed a motion by the board's lawyers to throw out the $1.75-million lawsuit by Carolyn Burjoski, a former English as a second language teacher.  The Waterloo Region District School Board (WRDSB) and former chair Scott Piatkowski are named as defendants. 'I am deeply relieved and grateful for this ruling. It is a significant victory and vindication, not just for me, but for everyone who dares to voice their valid concerns publicly,' Burjoski said in an emailed statement to media and supporters.

"Burjoski's lawsuit, launched in April 2022, stems from a Jan. 17 school board trustee meeting that year when she appeared as a delegation. Burjoski expressed her concern with the appropriateness of certain books in elementary school libraries. She gave two examples: A book that centred on an asexual character, and one about a transgender character. Her statement of claim says she spoke out about the books because she was worried they 'could put pressure on kids to start thinking sexually before they are ready to do so.'

"Piatkowski stopped Burjoski's delegation during the meeting because he said he had concerns what she was saying violated the Ontario Human Rights Code. Other trustees upheld that decision in a vote. 'I felt that the delegate was erasing the existence of trans people, that they were essentially questioning whether people who identify as trans or non-binary had a right to exist, and really that was the fundamental issue,' Piatkowski told CBC Kitchener-Waterloo at the time.... 

"After the meeting, Burjoski alleged in her statement of claim that Piatkowski gave 'false and defamatory statements' in local media and on social media. She also alleged the school board made defamatory statements in a message sent to staff and another posted to the board's website after the meeting. The statement of defence says Piatkowski's comments in the meeting, to media and on social media were 'entirely appropriate'....

"Burjoski has alleged she has faced repercussions since that meeting, including being suspended from work, and being banned from communicating with colleagues and students. She also said a formal complaint was launched that led to a disciplinary investigation. In her statement of claim, she said she became the centre of an 'international news story' where she was unfairly described as transphobic and discriminatory because of \Piatkowski and WRDSB's conduct and their false and malicious statements.' She said she has experienced stress, which led to her being hospitalized for anxiety....

"In his ruling, Ramsay said Burjoski's claims 'have substantial merit' and the 'comments of the board's agents were defamatory.' 'For example, they accused her of breaching the Human Rights Code, questioning the right of trans persons to exist and engaging in speech that included hate. She did not do any of those things,' Ramsay wrote.... Ramsay ordered the school board to pay $30,000 of Burjoski's legal fees in relation to this motion.... 'What happened here should not happen in a democratic society,' the judge wrote.

"In an email, the school board said it is reviewing the judge's decision, but 'as this matter remains before the courts, the board will not be commenting further.'

"Burjoski said the judge's decision shows the Human Rights Code 'does not prohibit public discussion.' 'I hope this decision sends a strong message to school boards that the weaponization of human rights codes against concerned citizens is an undemocratic abuse of the code,' Burjoski's statement said."

Read more: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/carolyn-burjoski-defamation-lawsuit-waterloo-region-school-board-1.7041375

Silenced teacher, Carolyn Burjoski, is taking the school board to court | Stories of Brave Canadians | Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms | May 29, 2023: 

Canada falls out of Human Freedom Index top 10

According to the 2022 Human Freedom Index published by Canada's Fraser Institute and the USA's Cato Institute, Canada dropped out of the world\s top 10 freest countries in 2020, falling from seventh-freest nation to 13th.   

Canada drops out of top 10 ‘freest’ countries | Western Standard - Christopher Oldcorn:

Jan 26, 2023 - "Canada dropped out of the top 10 freest countries in the world, according to a new study released by Canada’s Fraser Institute and America’s Cato Institute. The last time Canada did not rank in the top 10 of the Human Freedom Index (HFI) was back in 2012. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the government limited Canadians' movements, freedom of expression and assembly, and other freedoms, according to Fraser Institute Fellow and co-author of this year’s HFI Fred McMahon ... 

"The HFI measures personal freedom across several factors, including 'the rule of law, safety and security, identity and relationships (i.e. the freedom to choose your relationship partner), freedom of movement, speech, assembly, and religion … alongside economic freedom, the ability of individuals to make their own economic decisions.' Canada rank[ed] the 13th freest country in the world based on 2020 data, which was the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic and restrictions, dropping from sixth in 2019. Switzerland maintained its top spot, followed by New Zealand, Estonia, Denmark, Ireland, Sweden, Iceland, Finland, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. Egypt, Iran, Venezuela, Yemen, and Syria are the five least-freest countries."

Read more: https://www.westernstandard.news/business/canada-drops-out-of-top-10-freest-countries/article_d6ee1ffc-9d87-11ed-9fca-b742955ccf4c.html

Human Freedom Index 2022: https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/human-freedom-index-2022

Chart courtesy Reddit

Lockdowns enforced with brutality in Africa

COVID-19: Security forces in Africa brutalizing civilians under lockdown | Deutsche Welle:

April 20, 2020 - "Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda, and Kenya are some of the countries that security agencies have used brutal means to keep people off the streets. The brutality contradicts some of the measures put in place that allow people to go out only for essential purposes, such as buying food and medication....

"According to Nigeria's Human Rights Commission, security operatives have killed at least eighteen civilians while trying to enforce the state-imposed lockdown to contain the spread of COVID-19. The rights group added that those killed by security forces so far outnumber patients who have died from the coronavirus in the country....

"Nigerian police denied any wrongdoing and directed all complaints to its communications department.... 'We ensure that the police we deploy adheres strictly to the police code of conduct and respect for the rights of Nigerian citizens,' Mohammed Adamu, Nigeria's Inspector General of Police (IGP), said....

"But Ryan Cummings, a security analyst at Signal Risk, a political and security risk management consultancy, disputes the IGP's defense line.... According to Cummings, the brutality of police and security forces against civilians in the northeast has also been documented by rights groups like Amnesty and Human Rights Watch. He says security forces often mistreat civilians with impunity under the pretext of fighting Boko Haram and authorities turn a blind eye....

"In South Africa, videos of police brutality against violators of the lockdown that was imposed on March 26 went viral on social media platforms. Several reports of torture and murder of citizens accused of breaching the lockdown regulations are now under investigation. Some of the videos show soldiers kicking people and forcing them to roll on the ground. Others were forced to frog-march until they reach their homes.

"But perhaps the death of Collins Koza, a resident of Alexandra Township, [most] angered many South Africans. DW correspondent in Johannesburg Thuso Khumalo reports that soldiers entered his house and beat him for drinking beer and having some bottles in his fridge.... [Koza] died three hours later after the beating.... In a separate incident, an entire family was assaulted for having a get-together outside their house.... So far, eight people have been killed as a result, and at least 200 cases of police brutality recorded....

"Cummings partly blames the police minister Bheki Cele's recent comments that urged his force to use highhandedness while enforcing the lockdown. 'Do not be nice to suspects' he urged on his men and women and gave the green light to destroy private property if they were selling alcohol, according to local reports.

"Cummings also believes that there's a deep mistrust between South Africans and the security organs that stems back in the apartheid era. 'There are indicators that the brutal enforcement might keep the people off the streets but further dent the relationship and social contract between the security organs and the people they are meant to serve.'"

Read more: https://www.dw.com/en/covid-19-security-forces-in-africa-brutalizing-civilians-under-lockdown/a-53192163

Spain's parliament extends rights to great apes

Spanish parliament approves 'human rights' for apes | Law | The Guardian - Lee Glendinning:

June 26, 2019 - "Great apes should have the right to life and freedom, according to a resolution passed in the Spanish parliament, in what could become landmark legislation to enshrine human rights for chimpanzees, gorillas, orang-utans and bonobos.

"The environmental committee in the Spanish parliament has approved resolutions urging the country to comply with the Great Apes Project, founded in 1993, which argues that 'non-human hominids' should enjoy the right to life, freedom and not to be tortured.

"The project was started by the philosophers Peter Singer and Paola Cavalieri, who argued that the ape is the closest genetic relative to humans – that it displays emotions such as love, fear, anxiety and jealousy – and should be protected by similar laws.

"The resolutions have cross-party support and it is thought they will become law, meaning that potential experiments on apes in Spain will be banned within a year, according to a Reuters report....

"Using apes in circuses, television commercials or filming will also be banned and while housing apes in Spanish zoos, of which there are currently 315, will remain legal, supporters of the bill have said the conditions in which most of them live will need to improve substantially.

"In 1999, scientists and lawyers petitioned New Zealand's parliament to pass a bill conferring 'rights' on chimpanzees and other primates. The government gave the great apes something less than human rights, but ... legal protection from animal experimentation. The first country to take such a decision was Britain: Home Office guidelines now forbid experiments on chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas."

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/jun/26/humanrights.animalwelfare
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Limited government as framework for utopia

Why Robert Nozick was a libertarian | Big Think - Scotty Hendricks:

August 13, 2018 - "Robert Nozick ... was a philosopher at Harvard.... After the publication of his colleague John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice, which brilliantly argues for social democracy, Nozick was inspired to use similar arguments to promote his political positions. Appearing three years later, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (ASU) was Nozick’s only political philosophy book.

"He begins by advancing a straightforward premise, 'Individuals have rights, and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights)'.... Nozick’s idea of rights are protections against harm to us or our property. In this way they are negative rights; they assure us that other people won’t bother us and that we can claim compensation when they do, but they don’t obligate anybody else to do anything for us....

"Our having these rights means that it is wrong to hurt people or take their property for any reason unless they consent to such action, excepting when we are correcting for a previous violation of rights. Nozick argues that this premise leaves us with only one option when we’re deciding what kind of state is justified. He calls it a 'minimal state' or the 'night watchman state' and it is much, much, smaller than any functioning state is today.

"Nozick explains that the night watchman state is 'limited to the functions of protecting all its citizens against violence, theft, and fraud, and to the enforcement of contracts, and so on.' There would also not be any taxes in this state, as that would be forcing people to hand over their property with or without their consent. It also would not be able to enact laws preventing people from making their own life choices or that force people to make ones that they don't want to make....

"Nozick ... asks how we can build a society that works for a very diverse group of people.... [H]is stance is that you can only build a 'meta-framework' that allows for a variety of people to pursue a variety of life plans. Because of this, the 'utopia' that Nozick alludes to in the title is not one but many.

"In the minimalist state, it will be possible for people to form utopian communities on their own without outside interference. Nozick claims that this is one of the greatest perks of a minimalist state, as it will allow people to choose communities that fit their lifestyle, create new ones, leave ones they don’t like, or avoid utopian dreams altogether without hassle.

"Such utopian communities could be puritanical, hedonist, communist, capitalist, dedicated to eating cheese, or whatever else people think will make them happy. The minimalist state only assures that nobody is forced into these living situations, that nobody is forced to pay for these communities other than the people living in them, that any contracts signed are adhered to, and that nobody tries to harm or defraud the members of such groups."

Read more: https://bigthink.com/scotty-hendricks/why-robert-nozick-was-a-libertarian
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Libertarians should support climate action, iff...

Should Natural Rights Libertarians Support Carbon Mitigation? The Answer May Surprise You - Niskanen Center - Kevin Vallier:

July 18,2017 - "Here are the conditions under which natural rights libertarians should support a carbon mitigation policy.

1. The actions of human beings generate carbon emissions significant enough to pose a non-trivial risk of violating property rights (in one’s body or external objects) of persons whom the state has a duty to protect.
2. A carbon mitigation policy (CMP) will provide an effective protection against the risk.
3. The CMP will not in itself violate property rights, or take an excessive risk of violating them, because it will generally be targeted at persons or groups that generate problematic carbon emissions (and persons don’t have rights against restraints upon their rights-violating actions), where: a. The CMP coerces the smallest number of people sufficient to deter the emissions;  b.  The CMP is the least coercive means of deterring the emissions.
4. No non-governmental, non-rights violating alternative to CMP is socially or politically feasible....

"A complication with condition 1 is that no one person or small group produces enough carbon emissions to pose a non-trivial risk to legitimate property holdings. But this did not prevent Murray Rothbard from arguing that ... these threats should be handled through class-action lawsuits. But appeals to Rothbard aside, it’s clear enough that libertarians should be prepared to hold large, diffuse collectives accountable for property damages....

"Condition 2 is critical because the coercion involved in imposing a CMP can only be justified if it actually protects property rights. Condition 3 is critical because natural rights libertarians are not consequentialists. You cannot justify violating John’s property rights in order to protect Reba’s property rights more effectively....  Condition 4 is critical because if there is a non-coercive, non-governmental solution to a negative externality, the natural rights libertarian will hold that this solution is morally superior to a CMP.... .

"But how can ... anarchist natural rights libertarians, support governmental action to do anything? Well, in lieu of abolishing the state, presumably libertarians ... will insist that states be as just as possible. So if justice requires protecting people from negative externalities, then states should act to protect people from negative externalities....

"I fully acknowledge that a CMP will be imperfect. But the mere fact that it will be imperfect doesn’t mean we should forgo our libertarian duty to support policies that protect property rights, a duty we have even if the costs of protection are large....

"[A] CMP has to impose no greater burden on people, and on no more people, than is required to prevent the rights violation. And it is a virtual certainty that the CMP will be either too stringent or too lax. But that again is not a reason to not have a CMP, any more than the fact that the police are usually too stringent or too lax is a reason not to have them stop thieves and killers....

"However, there is an alternative to a CMP: geo-engineering, such as cloud-seeding with sulfuric compounds, diamond dust, or calcium carbonate, which can prevent rising sea levels by reflecting more sunlight from the Earth. These solutions are in principle far less economically costly than any proposed CMP and are much easier to coordinate (the US could do enough cloud seeding for the whole world all by itself). Moreover, while many climate change activists don’t take geo-engineering seriously and few support it, it is not obviously infeasible that the way in which Rothbardian mass-class-action lawsuits are. Most importantly, geo-engineering solutions appear to violate property rights less in comparison with CMPs....

"Geo-engineering is seriously problematic for lots of reasons. But there is nonetheless still some case for qualifying support for a CMP by making it conditional on the infeasibility or excessive risk of geo-engineering solutions that violate property rights less (if there are any)."

Read more: https://niskanencenter.org/blog/natural-rights-libertarians-support-carbon-mitigation-answer-may-surprise/
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Harriet Tubman to appear on U.S. $20 bill

Harriet Tubman From a Libertarian POV - Hit & Run : Reason.com - Nick Gillespie:

April 21, 2016 - "Harriet Tubman (1822-1913) is going to be the new face of the $20 bill. Great choice.... Here are four ways that Tubman isn't just a great choice in general but a great choice from a specifically libertarian perspective.

1. She chose to live free or die and articulated that message for all to understand. 'I had reasoned this out in my mind," she said, recalling the death of her master and the necessity of escape. "There was one of two things I had a right to, liberty, or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other; for no man should take me alive; I should fight for my liberty as long as my strength lasted, and when the time came for me to go, the Lord would let them take me.'
2. She exemplified higher-law theory, which holds that laws violating basic human rights are null and void regardless of the repressive superstructures created to legitimate and maintain them, and risked her life freeing about 70 other slaves as the 'Moses' of the Underground Railroad.... At the same time, she didn't advocate violence in the mode of John Brown, whose goal of ending slavery she shared.
3. She believed in armed self-defense, a radical-enough concept for poor whites, let alone renegade blacks. During her Underground Railroad missions, she carried a pistol both for protection against slave-catchers and, reportedly, to keep ambivalent "passengers" in line. To this day, blacks have a strong and yet routinely overlooked belief in the Second Amendment, leading one historian to argue that 'guns made the Civil Rights movement possible.' The desire of relatively powerless minorities to arm themselves can still be heard in pro-Second Amendment remarks made by rappers such as Ice-T.
4. She was a suffragette who, after helping slaves escape and working as a spy and scout for the Union in the Civil War, committed herself to women being allowed to vote and have equality under the law. According to Wikipedia, when Tubman was asked whether she believed women deserved the vote, she replied, 'I suffered enough to believe it.'

"A year ago, when Tubman's name was first floated as a possible figure for a new $20 bill, a number of anti-capitalist commenters observed that Tubman of all people shouldn't be on money because, by their reckoning, slavery is the essence of capitalism. As Damon Root noted at the time, this is not just ahistorical in the extreme, it flies in the face of the explicit thought of leading former slaves.... [T]he abolitionists were extremely clear that slavery violated fundamental rights in a liberal order, one that shouldn't countenance slavery for exactly the same reason it should promote free labor. As Frederick Douglass, who corresponded with and thought extremely highly of Tubman, wrote in a scathing letter to his former owner, 'In leaving you, I took nothing but what belonged to me, and in no way lessened your means for obtaining an honest living.'"

Read more: http://reason.com/blog/2016/04/21/4-ways-harriet-tubman-totally-kicked-ass
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Do chimpanzees have habeas corpus rights?

Chimpanzee Rights Get a Day in Court | WIRED - Brandon Keim:

May 27, 2015 - "More than a year after the starting fight for legal personhood for the research chimpanzees Hercules and Leo, the apes and their lawyers got their day in court. At a hearing in Manhattan on Wednesday, a judge heard arguments in the landmark lawsuit against Stony Brook University, with a decision expected later this summer. At stake: the question of whether only human beings deserve ... rights.

"A decision could set a precedent for challenging, under human law, the captivity of other chimpanzees — and perhaps other species. It’s a radical notion, and many legal experts doubted whether the lawsuit, one of several filed late in 2013 by the Nonhuman Rights Project, would ever reach court.

"But Justice Barbara Jaffe decided to consider the arguments. 'The law evolves according to new discoveries and social mores,' she said while presiding over the hearing. 'Isn’t it incumbent on judiciaries to at least consider whether a class of beings may be granted a right?'

"Jaffe posed that question to New York assistant attorney general Christopher Coulston, who represented the university, where the two chimps are housed. Coulston had argued that Jaffe was bound by the previous decisions of two appellate courts, which had ruled that other Nonhuman Rights Project chimps didn’t qualify for habeas corpus, the legal principle that protects people from illegal imprisonment.

"Both those decisions are controversial. In one, judges decided that habeas corpus didn’t apply because the chimp would be transferred from one form of captivity to another — in this case, a sanctuary. But illegally-held human prisoners have been released to mental hospitals, and juveniles into the care of guardians.

"In the other appeals court decision, judges declared that chimps are not legal persons because they can’t fulfill duties to human society. But that rationale arguably denies personhood to young children and mentally incapacitated individuals, as several high-profile legal scholars, including Constitutional law expert Laurence Tribe, pointed out. He filed a brief on behalf of the Nonhuman Rights Project, saying the court 'reached its conclusion on the basis of a fundamentally flawed definition of legal personhood.'"

Read more: http://www.wired.com/2015/05/chimpanzee-rights-get-day-court/
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Bob Marley sang of and for freedom (video)

Songs of Freedom: The Music of Bob Marley - Peter Saint-Andre, Full Context:

September 1993 - "The rock group Rush is the most famous libertarian band in the world, and justifiably so.... But there are other popular musicians who sing songs of freedom, one of the best of whom was the Jamaican reggae singer Bob Marley, who died in 1981. He was the most famous popular artist to come out of the Third World, and the most consistent in his celebration of freedom....

"Marley's music and thought is bound up with the religion of Rastafari. However, the essence of Rasta (which Marley once said means 'righteousness') is substantially political, so that the themes of Rasta and politics are often intertwined in Marley's music.

"Marley's earlier political songs are mostly protests against the system. Consider these lines from the song 'Slave Driver': 'Every time I hear the crack of a whip my blood runs cold / I remember on the slave ship how they brutalized the very souls / Today they say that we are free / Only to be chained in poverty'. Or these from 'Concrete Jungle', a song about life in a government housing project: 'Concrete jungle, where the living is hardest / Man, you've got to do your best / No chains around my feet but I'm not free / I know I am bound here in captivity'. Or these from 'Rebel Music (Three O'Clock Road Block)': 'Why can't we roam this open country / Why can't we be what we want to be / We want to be free'.

"Later in his career, Marley's songs became more than mere protest songs, and even evidenced an understanding of the causes of political problems. In 'Revolution', he sings: 'Never make a politician grant you a favor / They will always want to control you forever'. In 'War', he expounds on why the world is filled with conflict: 'Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned / Until there are no longer first class and second class citizens of any nation / Until the color of a man's skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes / Until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race / There's war'. Yet Marley is not anti-Western in his denunciation of injustice – he explicitly mentions 'the ignoble and unhappy regimes that hold our brothers in Angola, in Mozambique, South Africa', which must be 'toppled' and 'utterly destroyed' if war is to vanish.

"One of my favorite Marley songs, and one expressing his belief in human rights for all, is 'Get Up Stand Up' (which Amnesty International uses as its unofficial anthem). What I like about it is its secularism, and at the same time its insistence that you demand your rights. Here are some representative lines: 'Most people think great god will come from the sky, take away everything and make everybody feel high / But if you know what life is worth you will look for yours on earth / And now when you see the light, stand up for your right / Get up stand up, stand up for your right / Get up stand up, don't give up the fight / Life is your right, so don't give up the fight'."

Read more: https://stpeter.im/writings/essays/marley.html
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