British subjects have never had the broad protections for freedom of speech or the press that American citizens take for granted as guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but historically, the United Kingdom has been a beacon for free expression when compared to the rest of the world. Today, however, the right to freely express oneself in the U.K. is increasingly under threat, as exemplified by hundreds of bizarre prosecutions in recent years. The debate is heating up, though, as lawmakers consider reforms that would expand or quash liberty.

Before the blood of massacred children was even dry at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, and long before they had their stories straight about the shooting, much of the establishment media in the United States and even Communist China were claiming that the supposed gun-control “debate” had been “re-ignited.” To prove their point, they called up the usual fringe anti-gun rights zealots and lawmakers who have always opposed the Second Amendment. Supporters of the right to keep and bear arms, however, as polls show, say the media is increasingly “talking to itself.”

While the so-called “investigation” into the deadly attack on a U.S. government compound in Benghazi has been widely blasted and ridiculed as a “whitewash” and a “cover up” for failing to even raise serious questions about the “Benghazigate” scandal, the report still exposes a series of the Obama administration’s lies. It also highlights the absolute disaster left in the wake of Obama’s unconstitutional war on Libya — chaos and carnage that have largely been ignored by the establishment press even after the murder of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and other Americans.

As analysts widely suspected prior to its release, the official report about the attack on a U.S. government compound in the Libyan city of Benghazi ignored the most explosive “BenghaziGate” scandals: the Obama administration’s lawless arming of jihadists in Libya and Syria, as well as the blatant falsehoods parroted by White House officials for days after the killing of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens. Instead, the “investigation” focused on the obvious fact that security was inadequate, and predictably, demanded more taxpayer money for the Department of State.

Longtime pro-life campaigner Edward Atkinson, 81, was handed a three-month suspended jail sentence for his activism against abortion in September, and it was not the first time he has been prosecuted and even jailed for his work defending the unborn. In fact, Atkinson has been in prison more than a dozen times for his efforts over the years, and while he remains undeterred, the persecution is part of a broader assault by U.K. authorities on freedom of speech and religious liberty that is coming under increasing international scrutiny.  

Despite the arrest of “interim” Prime Minister Cheikh Modibo Diarra in the capital of Mali by rebellious troops last week, and the subsequent resignation of his interim government, a United Nations-led invasion to support the embattled Malian regime in its bid to recapture the north appears to be moving forward. While previous plans may have to be shelved in light of the recent developments, the coalition plotting and lobbying for UN military intervention remains committed to seeing it through.

In a move that analysts said put the U.S. government even closer to overt military intervention in Syria and potentially a broader regional war, the Obama administration and the German government announced the deployment of missiles and more American troops along the Syrian border — this time in Turkey. While lawmakers in Germany voted in favor of the effort, Obama, as has become typical, did not bother to obtain approval from Congress as required by the Constitution.

Activists worldwide were celebrating after a United Nations conference, which was seeking to hand control over the Internet to an obscure UN agency known as the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and its mostly dictatorial member regimes, ended in failure when a coalition of Western governments refused to back the schemes. However, analysts are warning that serious threats to the free and open Internet by the UN and a broad alliance of its authoritarian members are far from over.

Despite decades of Nelson Mandela denying that he was an official member of the South African Communist Party (SACP) during his Soviet-backed war on the Apartheid government, evidence uncovered recently by British historian Stephen Ellis shows otherwise. The new research confirmed that not only was the African National Congress (ANC) leader a member of the SACP, he may have actually been a senior official working with the party’s Central Committee.

The government of the United Kingdom is under fire from Christian organizations, churches, and activists for refusing to recognize the right of Christians to wear crucifixes and crosses at work — even in government-sector jobs — while Muslim women and Sikh men, for example, are guaranteed the right to wear their traditional religious attire regardless of their employers’ wishes. Critics have slammed this and other policies apparently aimed at silencing Christians or forcing them to act against their faith as discrimination, but U.K. officials are currently defending some of the schemes at the so-called “European Court of Human Rights.”