"Shut Up" They Explained

There are two great articles on the assault on free speech on campuses, Heather Mac Donald how American universities capitulate to the intolerant bullies from marxoid halfwits while Brendan O'Neill tackles Britain's authoritarian student body and their enablers in authority:

The ‘no platform’ policy of various student unions is forever being expanded to keep off campus pretty much anyone whose views don’t chime perfectly with the prevailing groupthink. Where once it was only far-right rabble-rousers who were no-platformed, now everyone from Zionists to feminists who hold the wrong opinions on transgender issues to ‘rape deniers’ (anyone who questions the idea that modern Britain is in the grip of a ‘rape culture’) has found themselves shunned from the uni-sphere. My Oxford experience suggests pro-life societies could be next. In September the students’ union at Dundee banned the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children from the freshers’ fair on the basis that its campaign material is ‘highly offensive’.

I realise the student activists are not typical students but an unrepresentative fringe of obsessives but why do the officials allow them to intimidate opponents? Perhaps they agree with them or maybe they are acting out of self interest- feeding the crocodile with a sacrificial victim in order to give themselves a quieter life.

Personally I have never felt the urge to "win" a debate by shutting down opposing views but I can see why the activists, Social Justice Warriors and the like do it- because it works.

Tweet Cops

The police are investigating more tweet crimes, including those of a blogger and those of a former youth crime commissioner. Tweet crimes are like normal crimes except they occur on Twitter, don't cause any harm to anyone and the police don't need to get off their arses to investigate them.

The commissioner is Paris Brown who wrote some tweets that "could be considered offensive" when she was 14 or so. One would have thought if there were likely to be incite crime then that would be evident in the years since she wrote them. The blogger is "Old Holborn" who was trolling Liverpudlians with comments about the Hillsborough disaster. They took it very badly- no one thought to tell them to "calm down, calm down!". However no one was harmed by his tweets.

The police have no business regulating petty insults and drunken boasts and it is worrying that they are unable to realise this.

What's The Name Of The $10 Prostitute Who Fellated Hugh Grant?

Ed Miliband apparently.

Hooray Scandal Averted

The proposals for a statutory press regulator that have been accepted by all three main parties ensures that the biggest public scandal of recent years will never be allowed to happen again.

I talk of course of the parliamentary expenses scandal which was exposed when the Daily Telegraph purchased the information in circumstances which were 100% justified yet probably illegal (at least by the person selling it).

Some of the press abuses were scandalous- the harassment of Chris Jeffries and the hacking of Millie Dowler's phone were inexcusable- but this response is all about empowering every public nuisance to suppress stories which they find damaging.

The complainant to the new press regulator will have to pay none of the costs- but given the big fines the regulator will be able to impose the newspapers will have to pay for lawyers even if they are blameless. Great news if you're Trafigura, the Church of Scientology or Spanker Mosely but terrible news if you have any notion of the powerful being held to account.

I don't really blame David Cameron- because once the Lib Dems decided they would rather screw over the press than uphold free speech he simply didn't have enough MPs to resist the Labour proposals (which were pretty much drafted by Hacked Off).

 Public outrage has successfully been harnessed to censor pretty much all forms of written  speech.

As An Inadequate...

John Kampfner writes:

Sickipedia, the site where the young Lancashire man Matthew Woods found inspiration to post "jokes" about the missing child April Jones on his Facebook page was "down for maintenance" when I tried to check it out this morning, though I managed to get a glimpse of the kind of content it publishes courtesy of Twitter.

I'll reproduce just one, which should come with the equivalent of one of those taste and decency disclaimers you get on TV: "My dick is a lot like Marmite. My wife hates it when I rub it on her toast". That was from May. That alone should allow you to conclude, if you hadn't already realised from its name, that this site is for the seriously sad and inadequate. That should be the end of the story. The decision of Woods, however, to reproduce "jokes" about April Jones and Madeleine McCann has led him to be sent for 12 weeks to a young offenders' institution. Prior to that he had been taken into protective custody to prevent him being lynched.

Firstly I agree that it is outrageous for someone to be jailed for reposting jokes on Facebook. Attempted Hilarity is not a crime.

Secondly as someone who has put up about 500 jokes on Sickipedia I have to object to Kampfner's description of as being for the sad and inadequate. Obviously it is true in my case but even so he misses the point of the site.

It is user generated so anyone can put jokes up, this can lead to dire jokes, plagiarised jokes and offensive jokes devoid of comedic merit. However it can also lead to brilliant jokes of the kind that will be liked by 1000s of people. The site has a voting system so the good jokes get more exposure and the crap gets washed away. In the forums of the site there is a lot of ranting about and mocking of the terrible jokes that get posted- there is no one among the regular users who doesn't realise that there is a good deal of rubbish on site. (I odubt that Matthew Jones is a regular user as his efforts were abysmally unfunny).

Taking one shit joke which didn't score well as being indicitive of the site is as fair as taking one Beatrix Campbell article and concluding that the Guardian is crap.

Lord Leveson Doesn't Understand Irony

From Lord Leveson:

The judge leading the probe into media behaviour threatened to quit after he was publicly criticised by a Cabinet Minister, senior Government sources claimed last night.
Lord Justice Leveson phoned Whitehall’s most senior mandarin and demanded that Education Secretary Michael Gove – who claimed the inquiry had created a ‘chilling atmosphere’ towards freedom of speech – should be gagged. In the angry call to Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood, the judge claimed that if Ministers were not silenced, his inquiry, set up to investigate phone-hacking by Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers, would be rendered worthless.

Silencing ministers is a great way to rebut allegations of assaulting free speech.....

"Shut Up" He Explained.

The far left's approach to winning arguments:

An open call was issued Jan. 12 for owners of Sarrazin's book to turn in their copies at galleries and museums across the country. The books are to be on display and then, according to the artist, "recycled for a good purpose" at the end of the festival, which runs from April 27 to July 1.

 No, not like book burning at all.

There is a broader point to be made about the tactic of trying to make certain positions simply off limits rather than matters of debate. This happens a lot- albeit usually in a less Hitlery fashion than Martin Zet does here- with speech codes, pressure on newspapers not to report certain topics etc. To do this requires a huge ego- as it assumes that your own position is not only right but that it is impossible for you not to be.

SOPA Not Super

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is a bill going through Congress ostensibly aimed at stopping online piracy. In reality it looks like a payoff to big political donors in Hollywood who want to stop the dissemination of their products among people not willing to pay top dollar.

This is short sighted as people who download torrents and sample music are more likely to pay for the products at a later point than those who do not. In many ways their mindset resembles that of football club owners who for many decades resisted live televisions coverage of games because they didn't realise that it fueled the demand for tickets rather than replaced it. However they have the right to want their intellectual property protected by the law.

 The problem with the bill is that the powers to enforce copyright are so vague and punitive to advertisers and search engines that wealthy producers merely need to threaten a site to effectively kill it.

A committee seems to have delayed the legislation for now but it isn't dead yet.

Australia's Shame

Australian newspaper columnist Andrew Bolt has been convicted of a crime for two columns he wrote in 2009 in which he noted that many Aborigine activists were in fact white. This greatly offended people like Pat Eatock who did not appreciate it being pointed out that she is slightly less convincing as an aborigine than Ali G was as a Jamaican.

So naturally she wrote to the newspaper demanding an apology- wait no she didn't do that- she went to the police and demanded that Bolt be charged. Which he was, and rather incredibly convicted. This is a confidence trickster's charter- develop an identity in order to siphon government grants then sue for racism when it is pointed out.

The plaintiffs go well beyond simply being con artists though, one of them, Geoff Clark- is a serial rapist of teenage girls.One has to wonder whether his hyper sensitivity to having his identity queried is because that provided a useful shield against criminal proceedings into his sexual abuse.

Equally incredible other journalists have rushed to support the verdict- that is to say they support giving the state the right to criminalise somebody whose views fall outside of a narrow range- this loathsome editorial in the Sydney Morning Herald is an example that should become notorious. Apologists for the suppression of free speech are claiming that Bolt deserved to be punished because his columns contained inaccuracies- as if mistakenly saying that someone's father was white European rather than their mother is some kind of libel worthy of censure.

The judge- Mordacai Bromberg embodies the same mindset as Mohammed Bouyari- the assassin on Theo Van Gogh- in that he believes that certain ethnic groups have a right not to offended or treated with sarcasm, and that transgressors must be punished.

This is a shameful verdict that has empowered those who want to use their pretend ethnic identity to put themselves beyond any kind of criticism and is more suitable to countries like Iran and Cuba than to Australia.

Quote Of The Day

“I’ve never understood why we allow our print media to support a particular political viewpoint.”

Sue Marsh at "Liberal Conspiracy".

Justice- Not Only Blind But Retarded

I find this story almost unbelievable, it's something you'd expect from Cuba or Russia not the United States:

21-year-old Evan Emory of Michigan has been sentenced to two months jail time after filming and posting a video featuring him singing a sexually explicit song to elementary school students. The only thing is, Emory never did that. He actually sang an appropriate (and apparently well-received) song to the kids and edited in the other song (which the kids never heard) later for a comedy video.

He has also been banned from approaching children under 17. If they're jailing people for bad comedy why not start at the top and throw the creators of "Funny or Die" into the slammer?

The parents were angry that he had misused images featuring their children which is fair enough, there probably is an issue relating to licencing the images of the children that merits a fine. However their anger was quite palpably not in proportion to the actual offence and their grievances were pandered to as though they were angry Muslims- with the prosecution initially going for a 20 year prison sentence and the aggrieved parents arguing that this is what he deserved.


PS- bonus points to anyone who spots what the title refers to.

Shorter Simon Jenkins:

We must destroy free speech to save it!!!

Blasphemy

Arresting a girl for burning a Koran ostensibly for inciting religious hatred, underlines a worrying development. We have essentially created a blasphemy law that grants Islam protections from the normal expression of free speech. Furthermore extremist Muslims have been granted the final say over what is allowed to be said- because it is the implicit threat of violence from those sources that gives the police the incentive to arrest blasphemers in order to keep the peace.

Ordinary People Are Easily Alarmed

On the subject of risible twats who hype jocular comments on Twitter into "death threats", the man who joked about blowing up an airport, Paul Chambers, had his appeal rejected. The judge who ruled against him claimed that "any ordinary person" would be alarmed by the comment.

That's right, a sitting judge has such a low opinion of the general public that she seriously argues that a random post on Twitter threatening to blow up an airport by someone who is frustrated at missing a flight is likely to be taken as being a literal threat to do just that, despite the fact that he clearly had neither the means or inclination to do either.

My belief in the abilities of the general public is not vast but even I don't think they're that stupid. As with Yasmin Alibhai-Brown's claim to find the quote by Gareth Compton calling for her to be stoned to death to be a death threat- it is clearly untrue.

Incidentally in the case of Yaz, her gall is even more breathtaking than usual, she is accusing her victim of calling for her stoning because he mocked her actual apologetics for a real upcoming stoning of an Iranian woman!

Rather extraordinarily, Mr Compton has been suspended from the Conservative Party on the grounds that what he said was "not acceptable". Seeing as he was defending David Cameron against Yaz's insistence that he had no moral authority to criticise Iran for stoning women to death, then I can only assume that it is now official Tory policy that Dave has no moral authority.

Best Burqa Ban Protest Ever

I like this protest for three reasons, it supports the principle of allowing the burqa, it mocks the burqa itself and it features two women wearing hot pants.

Update: I've had to remove the video because it plays whether you press play or not.

Blogging Advice

Boycott Squarespace if at all possible.

Mission Accomplished

A Swedish cartoonist who has received death threats for depicting the Islamic prophet Mohammed was attacked as he gave a presentation to a Swedish University. He is keen to go back and give another speech to uphold free speech, however:

Officials said they would "not likely" invite Vilks again because of the incident. In some quarters, the university's reponse is adding to concerns that violence and threats from some members of the Muslim community are effectively muzzling free speech.

Another victory for militant Islamism over free speech.

Atheist Asbo

Oh ffs:

An atheist who left leaflets mocking Jesus Christ, Islam and the Pope in an airport's prayer room has been given an Asbo.

Harry Taylor, 59, from Higher Broughton, Salford, left the anti-religious posters in prayer rooms at Liverpool John Lennon Airport in November and December 2008.

Admittedly getting Muslims angry before they fly can have certain consequences which we wish to avoid.

It's somewhat ironic for an airport named after John Lennon to seek to ban someone for expressing views that might be offensive to religious people. Sure, if they asked him not to leave the leaflets in the room and he kept doing it then he is partly in the wrong, but given the enthusiasm of religion for proselytising their beliefs you'd think they would appreciate it.

I suppose as it is an election right now I should look up which party is committed to getting rid of "religiously aggravated" offences, all I know is that Labour supports the idea.

Free Speech- Swings & Roundabouts

Good week for free speech.

Bad week for free speech.

What Is It With Canada?

In most senses Canada is a model country- healthy economy, high standard of living and decent education standards etc. Which is why it's so depressing when Canadians reject the notion of free speech and try to silence mildly provocative pundits like Mark Steyn or recently Ann Coulter. I say they are provocative but to be honest I can't think of any specific bad thing that someone has been provoked to do by them.

Whilst there is always a totalitarian element on the left, and to be honest on the right as well, in Canada they can become mainstream by playing on that nation's big weakness- an obsession with defining themselves against the United States, so totalitarians can justify their intolerance by presenting at a moderate alternative to the USA's "religion of Free speech".

Take for example this Canadian pundit, Susan G Cole (Susan seems like an odd name for a man) denouncing the concept of free speech: