Do you feel safer on the internet today? Do you usually feel unsafe on the internet? Well, today is Safer Internet Day; further information via the EU, Hotline.ie, Inhope, ISPAI, InS@fe, NCTE and WebWise.ie. As the NCTE page explains:

Safer Internet Day takes place each year in February and is an opportunity to dedicate some time in schools to reflect on some of the issues and more importantly to raise awareness of them. … The Safer Internet Day website provides details of all the SID events and also information about previous events and showcase some of the work done by schools and young people.

Safer Internet Day_Blogathon
As part of Safer Internet Day 2008, there will be a Global Safer Internet Day 2008 blog, of which the European Commissioner Vivian Reding in Brussels will be the first to post …

According to various news outlets (BBC | BreakingNews.ie | Irish Independet here and here | Irish Times (sub req’d) | RTE | Telegraph) French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen (left!) has been given a three-month suspended jail term and fined 10,000 euros for playing down the Nazi occupation of France, describing it as “not especially inhumane” in an interview with the far-right magazine Rivarol in January 2005. Moreover, according to the BBC,

Elsewhere in the article he described the 1944 massacre of 86 people in the town of Villeneuve d’Ascq as the actions of a junior officer “mad with rage”, and praised the Gestapo for its role in the incident. The French court ruled that Le Pen had denied a crime against humanity and had been complicit in condoning war crimes.

This is not the first time that Le Pen has faced legal sanctions for making controversial comments about the actions of the Nazis. In 1987 he was fined for describing the Nazi gas chambers as a “detail of history”.

This is unsurprising, but disappointing. The best answer to speech is more speech. Hence, as I have already said on this blog, (in the context of Le Pen’s abortive Dublin visit, condemned here by former Socialist Party TD Joe Higgins and here by UCD Labour Youth), if le pen (freedom of expression) truly is mightier than le sword (the police power of the state), then the best response to Le Pen is to engage with him rather than to prosecute him.

From today’s Irish Times, I learn that a new strategy for third-level sector [is] under way (sub req’d). Seán Flynn writes [with added links]:

A framework document mapping out the future of the third-level sector in the State is to be prepared by the Department of Education and the Higher Education Authority. Preliminary work on the paper – A National Strategy for Higher Education – has begun and submissions will be invited from education partners, business, employers and other interested parties. Read the rest of this entry »