FSNN | Free Speech News Network https://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html Homepage Peruvian journalists face threats, death amid country’s democratic backsliding SEC Commissioner Peirce counters views that crypto rule will foster synthetic tokens US House Lawmakers Launch Probe into Kalshi, Polymarket Insider Trading Crypto, Banks, Policy Experts Press Congress to Modernize Bank Secrecy Act Democrats Tried To Bury 2024 Election Autopsy Tom Emmer brushes off law enforcement concerns over Clarity Act Near Leads AI Token Rally With 50% Surge as $5 Price Target Emerges Crypto Is Growing Up—Why Some Everyday Traders Are Moving On SpaceX’s IPO Filing Shows Elon’s Twitter ‘Business Genius’ Was A Fantasy War Powers Vote Is the Latest Embarrassment for House Speaker Mike Johnson Congress hits Polymarket and Kalshi with a massive insider trading probe Institutional Crypto Adoption Grows Despite $1B Fund Outflows and Geopolitical Risks Trump Media Moves Over $200 Million in Bitcoin as Losses Pile Up: Arkham Should Billionaires Pay More Taxes? The agentic CFO in your pocket NYSE Parent, OKX Counter Hyperliquid With Regulated Oil Perpetual Futures ICE to Launch Oil Perpetual Futures With OKX Trump’s ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund’ Is Built on a Contradiction Sudanese authorities jail journalist Rishan Oshi over corruption reporting NEAR surges 19.4% as index trades flat Space X IPO Is ‘Bad News’ for Tech Stocks: But What About Bitcoin? Polymarket Hit By ‘Internal Top-Up’ Wallet Exploit, $700K Drained Who Abuses Food Delivery? AI infrastructure race heats up as IREN pitches full-stack strategy, WhiteFiber lands $160M deal Polymarket-Linked UMA Adapter Exploited For at Least $520K Morning Minute: Mark Cuban Sells His Bitcoin Amazon Gets Into The AI Podcast Slop Business Law School Recommended Against Student’s Bar Admission, Partly for Alleged “Celebration” of Charlie Kirk Assassination in Law School Clinic Bitcoin (BTC) left behind in the geopolitical melee: Crypto Daily XRP Ledger Activity Surges, But What Is Stopping Price Breakout? NEAR Protocol Jumps 28% on Privacy, AI, and Scaling Upgrades The Republican Party Is Nothing More Than a Cult of Trump Ark Invest buys $12.5 million of Bullish stock in four days Polymarket Seeks Japan Entry Amid Global Scrutiny: Report Polymarket Taps Jupiter Exec to Lead Japan Push: Report Review: A Victim of Chinese Authoritarianism Explains Censorship and Surveillance ZachXBT flags $520K Polymarket exploit on Polygon, team says funds are safe Verus Bridge Hacker Returns $8.5M ETH, Keeps $2.8M as Bounty It’s Not Just ICE Stockpiling Weapons—the IRS, EPA, and Other Feds Are Arming Up Too Andrei Aliaksandrau on trial in Belarus in June 2022. Photo: Belta.by It will be no revelation when I say Belarus prisons are bleak. The conditions are dirty, the routines mind-numbing and the guards brutal. But perhaps this detail will surprise you: in the middle of some prisons are books. Beautiful, transportive books. Even politically risqué books. “This atmosphere was complemented by an unexpectedly rich library, where prisoners could even find Orwell or Machiavelli,” one former detainee told the human rights organisation Viasna this week. “Books became a lifeline. From the prison library and bookshop, I managed to access literature that helped me endure,” said Larysa Shchyrakova in an article she wrote for us last month. For her, one book in particular, Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, which details the Viennese neurologist’s experience in a Nazi concentration camp, became essential reading. A library in jail cuts both ways though. In some penal colonies the way to punish political prisoners is not to allow them access, so they have to risk further punishment by borrowing books from fellow inmates. Today, 21 May, is the International Day of Solidarity with Political Prisoners in Belarus. We’re thinking of all the 1,000-plus prisoners wrongfully detained and we’re especially thinking of our colleague Andrei Aliaksandraŭ. We don’t know exactly what his daily life is like – we haven’t been able to directly contact him in years – but we do hope that erudite and curious Andrei will not be one of the unlucky ones forbidden the solace of reading. By January this year, Andrei had spent five of his birthdays in prison. A journalist by training, who once worked for Index in our London office and later became a regular contributor from Belarus, Andrei was sentenced to 14 years on a charge of high treason several years ago. To mark the grim anniversary and to keep his case in the spotlight, we wrote this about him. We feel we have failed Andrei. Others have been released ahead of their full sentence. Andrei has not. That’s not through lack of trying. While our dreams to have his name flash up in his favourite Liverpool FC stadium have yet to materialise, we’ve managed to get Margaret Atwood, Nadya from Pussy Riot, Index chair Sir Trevor Phillips and Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore to read lines from a poem he wrote from prison. We’ve sent letters to him and to politicians. We’ve published a letter of his too, written on the day of his trial. If anything gives a sense of his character – kind, generous, optimistic – it is this. But still, he is in prison. For doing nothing. No, for doing something heroic – helping protesters following the fraudulent election back in 2020. That’s not to say what we’ve done has been in vain. For Andrei and his family, there has been comfort in knowing he has not been forgotten, and comfort in the knowledge that one day he will walk free. We hope that day comes soon. 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