Posts Tagged ‘free speech’
Tara Shultz, 20, of Yucaipa, CA, wants to censor your library. She wants four graphic novels on the syllabus at Crafton Hills College banned. Why? Because Schulz thinks Persepolis, Fun Home, Y: The Last Man Vol. 1, and The Sandman Vol. 2: The Doll’s House will warp minds.
Now stand back and watch sales of thsoe titles rocket.
Schulz tells the Redland Daily Facts Newspaper – and this is phrase all anti-censors should get on a T-shirt.
“I expected Batman and Robin, not pornography.”
Shultz has formed a group of banstubrators, one of whom is her father . He wants the books banned because – get this – “there are under-aged kids here at this campus.
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Anorak
Posted: 16th, June 2015 | In: Reviews | Comment
Linda Jones, 65, of St Albans, has been found guilty of a religiously-aggravated hate crime. Jones, who had no previous, is now the owner of a 12 month community order and six week curfew following an altercation in Watford on April 17, 2014.
The Herts Advertiser reports:
Judge Pilling found Jones, who had no previous convictions, guilty of a religiously-aggravated Section 4A public order offence last month, after she called two Muslim men “terrorists with guns in their pockets”.
During the Jewish holiday of Passover last year, Jones and other members of the Beit Nitzachon congregation were manning a council-approved literature table in Watford town centre.
The table was draped with the national flags of Britain and Israel and carried Messianic Jewish literature.
Hamza Shah, 21, and Haroon Munir, 24, came over and began to talk about Israel – they are not in favour of the country.
After several minutes Hamza Shah led Haroon Munir away from the argument, during which Jones was found to have made the racist comment.
Richard Cavarth reports on the courtroom exchange, in which District Judge Annabel Pilling refers to Israel as the ‘Holy Land’. Words matter. Judge Pilling has made a conscious choice. The country whose flag was being objected to is called Israel. The case also featured Jones being asked under cross-examination by prosecutor for the CPS, barrister Alan Burdis-Smith: “Was that [the Israel flag] there to wind up Muslims?”
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Anorak
Posted: 12th, June 2015 | In: Reviews | Comment
‘Qata is great. Wish you were hear,’ love Sanjay
The Qatari government wanted to show invited journalists how well it’s treating migrant workers toiling on its 2022 World Cup Sandlantis. But four BBC journalists thought it an idea to do some actual journalism, peeling away from the group to see things not on the official tour.
At which point thery were arrested for trespassing and banged up in jail – which is ironically and very possibly much more in keeping with the authentic labour camp experience, allegedly.
Fifa, that bastion of freedom, fairness and transparency, says it is investigating the arrests:
“Any instance relating to an apparent restriction of press freedom is of concern to Fifa and will be looked into with the seriousness it deserves.”
Fifa did not wonder aloud why the journalists didn’t just grease some palms with silver and big watches and make the problem go away. (Because doing so would be wrong and illegal – ed).
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Anorak
Posted: 18th, May 2015 | In: Sports | Comment
You won’t see Bath University’s Comedy Writing, Improvisation and Performance Society’s sketch Cooking With Christ. It’s been censored by the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, known locally as the Student Union.
This Morality Council was supported by university chaplains in ordering a line featuring Mohammed cut from the show. The censors said the joke caused “great offence”.
The Bible According to CWIPS was the title of the performance that had the cramped, upstairs-corner of the Bath Brew House roaring with laughter. The show combined pop culture, Richard Dawkins, and the bestseller of all time – the Bible – to construct an amusingly witty performance. However, prior to the opening night, the society was met with some rather strong requests to edit the show.
The CWIPS then made a bad move: it asked the Student Union to decide if one sketch that mentioned Mohammed went too far?
Two SU officials concluded with the committee that the sketch crossed the fine line between humour and offensiveness, and the sketch was swiftly removed from the show.
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Anorak
Posted: 6th, May 2015 | In: Reviews | Comment
Thoughts on the Garland, Texas, shootings. Was it a show of free speech to host a let’s draw Mohammed art show? Was it deliberate provocation? I’d say, yes and yes.
Around 200 people were at Pamela Geller’s New York–based American Freedom Defense Initiative’s Muhammad Art Exhibit. The event featured a contest for cartoon depictions of the Muslim prophet Mohammed. To the winner a $10,000 prize and world-wide fame.
Geller’s driving force was, apparently, a chance for her to stand with Charlie Hebdo, the French magazine whose staff were slaughtered by Islamists for depicting Mohammed. Among other things, Geller wants to ban New York’s Park51, the planned Muslim community center she denounces as “the ground zero mega-mosque”. Her committment to free speech is pretty much zero. Satire works best when it’s a scattergun aiming high and low. Geller picks away at a single target. She is no Charlie Hebdo.
Many in the UK first heard of anti-Islam bloggers Pamela Geller or Robert Spencer when in 2013 they were scheduled to address the anti-Islam party the English Defence League, itself no fan of free speech. Theresa May, the Home Secretary, banned them from the country. Their presence would not be “conducive to the public good”.
What utter balls. Let them all in. Let them all talk. Banning speech is a sign of the bansturbators weakness. They don’t trust their countrymen to hold the nutjobs to ridicule. We are all so stupid that exposure to the invited guest will turn the sane into race rioters, bigots and mass murderers. Of course it’s not good for community cohesion to have somone spouting racist claptrap, but banning, say, Zakir Naik, who “professed his admiration for Osama Bin Laden” or the ridiculous and now dead anti-gay loon Fred Phelps only serves to make you wonder who gets to talk and why? That creates
problems of trust in the censor.
For civil libertarians, it is clear that when leaders insist that they “Stand with Charlie” it does not mean actually standing with free speech. To the contrary, the greatest threat facing free speech today is found in Western governments, which have increasingly criminalized and prosecuted speech, particularly anti-religious speech. Once the defining right of Western Civilization, free speech is dying in the West and few world leaders truly mourn its passing.
Around the world, speech is under attack under an array of hate speech and anti-discrimination laws… The result is a growing, if not insatiable, appetite for speech regulation that only increases after violent responses to controversial publications.
The most recent tragedy in France follows an all too familiar pattern from publication to prosecution. Consider what happened in 2005 with the publication of the Danish cartoons and the global riots leading to the murder of non-Muslims and burning of churches and homes. The West rallied around the right of free speech, but then quietly ramped up prosecutions of speech. It happened again in 2012 when a low-budget trailer of a low-grade movie was put on YouTube. The “Innocence of Muslims” trailer was deemed insulting to Mohammad and Islam and led to another global spasm of murder and arson by irate Muslims. Again, Western leaders professed support for free speech while cracking down further on anti-religious speech. Even in the United States, President Obama insisted that the filmmaker Nakoula Basseley Nakoula had every right to make the film. However, the next image that the world saw after that speech was filmmaker being thrown into a police car in handcuffs for technical violations of a probation on unrelated charges..
So much for the background to the event.
And with the art class in full daub, Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi of Phoenix arrived by car. They were carrying assault rifles and began shooting at a police car.Garland Independent School District police Officer Bruce Joiner was shot and injured. Very soon, Simpson and Nadir Soofi were then shot dead.
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anorak
Posted: 5th, May 2015 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
Free Speech is under threat at Georgetown University. The college’s student magazine, The Hoya, wants to no-platform a woman they don’t approve of.
The Georgetown University College Republicans hosted Christina Hoff Sommers, an author and philosophy professor known for her criticism of contemporary feminism and her disavowal of a so-called “rape myth,” last week.
By giving Sommers a platform, GUCR has knowingly endorsed a harmful conversation on the serious topic of sexual assault.
Giving voice to someone who argues that statistics on sexual assault exaggerate the problem and condemns reputable studies for engaging in “statistical hijinks” serves only to trigger obstructive dialogue and impede the progress of the university’s commitment to providing increased resources to survivors.
Arguing the statistics will not be tolerated! Surely, the students are sure-footed enough to be able to counter any naysayers? Demanding Sommers be made to shut up is lamentably weak.
The Hoya’s editorial board continues:
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Anorak
Posted: 29th, April 2015 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
Katie Hopkins compares migrants to ‘cockroaches in her outrageous-to-deadline Sun newspaper column. And the UN high commissioner for human rights, Prince Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein of Jordan, says:
“The Nazi media described people their masters wanted to eliminate as rats and cockroaches. This type of language is clearly inflammatory and unacceptable, especially in a national newspaper. The Sun’s editors took an editorial decision to publish this article, and – if it is found in breach of the law – should be held responsible along with the author.”
And on he went:
“This vicious verbal assault on migrants and asylum seekers in the UK tabloid press has continued unchallenged under the law for far too long. I am an unswerving advocate of freedom of expression, which is guaranteed under Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), but it is not absolute.”
But me no buts. You cannot be unswerving in support of free speech and then say it has limits.
“The commissioner also accused the Daily Express of seeking to whip up anti-foreigner prejudice. To give just one glimpse of the scale of the problem, back in 2003 the Daily Express ran 22 negative front pages stories about asylum seekers and refugees in a single 31-day period…. Asylum seekers and migrants have, day after day, for years on end, been linked to rape, murder, diseases such as HIV and TB, theft, and almost every conceivable crime and misdemeanour imaginable in front-page articles and two-page spreads, in cartoons, editorials, even on the sports pages of almost all the UK’s national tabloid newspapers. History has shown us time and again the dangers of demonising foreigners and minorities, and it is extraordinary and deeply shameful to see these types of tactics being used in a variety of countries, simply because racism and xenophobia are so easy to arouse in order to win votes or sell newspapers.”
So sayeth the UN about free speech and its limits. Current members of the UN Human Rights Council include, for example, such bastions of equality and free speech as Saudi Arabia and Gabon, where the state-run media regulatory agency, the National Communications Council, suspended three newspapers in 2013, one of them a satirical work.
Anorak
Posted: 24th, April 2015 | In: Reviews | Comment
Is the Bible banned? Are some bits of it, to use the dread word of the age, ‘inappropriate’? Mike Overd has been told that reading bits of the Good Book aloud is offensive.
A Christian street preacher has accused a judge of trying to “censor” the Bible after he was convicted of a public order offence for quoting an Old Testament passage condemning homosexuality.
Mike Overd was fined £200 for quoting part of a passage from Leviticus 20 which condemns same-sex relationships as sinful and calls for gay men to be put to death.
We each of us have our prejudices. Old Mr Anorak would instead quote the bit from Leviticus 19:28 about piercings and tattoos: “‘Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the LORD.”
Anyhow, instead of ignoring or mocking Mr Overd and pitying the pigeons in the precinct forced to listen to him bang on, he was arrested.
He found himself up before District Judge Shamim Ahmed Qureshi. The Beak wondered why Overd chose the passage he did and din’t opt for, say, Leviticus 18 which calls homosexuality as an “abomination” but fails to demand all gays are murdered.
He acquitted the former paratrooper, who regularly preaches on the streets of Taunton, Somerset, of a separate charge for suggesting that the Prophet Mohammed was a “paedophile”.
At which point we should cheer Mr Quershi who despite the censorious, illiberal stupidity of the police and CPS saw what was stake, stating:
“Whilst we all want to encourage public civility, there is a higher principle at stake. As long as there is no incitement to violence, then people should be allowed to speak freely without fearing legal repercussions.
Free speech has one more champion.
Anorak
Posted: 31st, March 2015 | In: Reviews | Comment
To the London School of Economics, where students love the place so much they are occupying it. Occupation is good, say the LSE students shut inside the Vera Anstey Suite meeting room, now dubbed the ‘Free University of London’.
(You see Occupiers do guarantee freedom. That point to you members of the monocular Boycott Israel society).
The occupiers demand “a university run by students, lecturers and workers”. They want tuition fees scrapped. They want an end to zero-hours contracts.
And:
They call for “genuine” university democracy—that is, a directly elected student-staff council to make university decisions. Furthermore they demand divestment from destructive companies, including the fossil fuel industry, and those who profit from the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
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Anorak
Posted: 20th, March 2015 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
Free speech is under attack at Dixie State University in St. George, Utah. A group called Young Americans for Liberty (YAL) says it has been banned from mocking Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara. The YAL produced three flyers, one for each leader.
The Washington Free Beacon notes:
The flyers were not approved because the school policy does not permit students to “disparage” or “mock individuals.”
You can’t mock leaders? And one of them’s dead!
William Jergins, the president of YAL, told the Washington Free Beacon the move represented a “blanket denial of the expression of our beliefs in the way that we felt would be most readily understood and accepted by our fellow students”
What with this being America, Jergins and two of his colleagues aren’t just carrying on regardless. They’re suing:
The lawsuit claims Dixie State has “adopted and enforced excessive restrictions on the rights of students organizations, and limited student speech in open areas of the campus.”
Their case is being supported by free speech champions FIRE, whose President and CEO Greg Lukianoff states:
“One has to wonder how Dixie State students can engage in serious political discussions—or any discussion at all—when they are forced to follow the university’s ridiculous policies, which go so far as to forbid any poster in a residence hall that students or administrators can claim creates an ‘uncomfortable’ environment’…
“Dixie State unconstitutionally restricts access to open areas on campus for expressive activities by requiring that students request permission to speak several weeks in advance. And once approved, plaintiffs were relegated to a previously unknown “free speech zone” that comprises only around 0.1 percent of Dixie State University’s 100-acre campus,” states the lawsuit.
A free speech zone? We thought that was called America. But not any more it isn’t.
The college has rules on flyers:
-39 CAMPUS ADVERTISING AND POSTING OF LITERATURE
39.2 All advertising literature must have a stamp of “approved advertising” to be considered legal for campus posting. This stamp is in the office of the vice president of student services.
39.4 Individuals posting “non-approved” literature may be cited for violation of Utah state law and fined for littering and/or violations listed above.
And if that’s not sad enough:
* All advertising materials should be computer generated or professionally produced.
• Materials must be in good taste (FCC guidelines), adhere to campus policy, look professional, and
not detract from the campus appearance. Dixie State University reserves the right to remove any
posted materials that do not meet our posting guideline
* [students display material] “may not single out any individual group(s) or entities in a derogatory manner.”
You need a permit for free speech on campus – the place where students should be challenging ideas. Self-expression needs approval. Your message should be “professionally” produced. Never mind the message, cop a load of that logo.
This would be remarkably pathetic if it were not typical of the West’s war on freedom of expression…
Anorak
Posted: 8th, March 2015 | In: Reviews | Comment
Campus life is an intoletant place. Kaitlyn Schallhorn looks at the story of one female Pro Life student’s dealing with feminist and LGBT organizations at the University of North Carolina – Wilmington.
Madison Marston invited UNCW’s National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL), PRIDE, and the Women’s and Gender Studies Student Association (WSSA) to join the debate on Ratio Christi’s chat “Abortion and Human Equality: A Pro Life Defense of the Unborn”.
All the groups declined.
Fair enough. You don’t have to speak. But their response said much about how intolerance and the exchange of ideas is taboo.
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Anorak
Posted: 18th, February 2015 | In: Reviews | Comment
A man has ben shot dead at Copenhagen’s Krudttoenden café, where a debate on free speech was underway.
The talk – called Art, blasphemy and the freedom of expression – featured an address by the French ambassador, the sight of Swedish artist Lars Vilks and the ghost of Salman Rushdie, who, though not there in person, was remembered for this being the anniversary of the fatwa that marked his life.
Helle Merete Brix, one of the organisers, says:
“I saw a masked man running past. A couple of police officers were injured. I clearly consider this as an attack on Lars Vilks.”
Speaking after the deadly attack on Charlie Hebdo last month, in which 12 died, Vilks said: “This will create fear among people on a whole different level than we’re used to. Charlie Hebdo was a small oasis. Not many dared do what they did.”
Two gunmen escaped in a dark Volkswagen Polo and are still at large, according to local reports.
I was invited to Lars Vilks committee in Copenhagen to present Passion for Freedom London Art Festival. The committee is organized annually and happens on the anniversary of Salman Rushdie’s fatwa. The meeting started with a short introduction from one of the organizers followed by François Zimeray, the French ambassador, commemorating Charlie Hebdo and discussing the challenges that we face when it comes to the threats to freedom of speech and democracy in our countries.
After a short introduction, Inna Shevchenko opened the panel and started to talk about Femen and her work. She also discussed her close friendship with Charb, the editor of Charlie Hebdo, and how they both stood strong exercising their right to freedom of expression. A few minutes into her speech we heard separate bangs… It sounded like a machine gun..
After the shooting subdued everyone started to come together. We decided to continue with the presentation…Everyone thanked us that we continued. We will not surrender; they cannot kill all of us.
Free speech. No buts…
Anorak
Posted: 14th, February 2015 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
To Paris, where Combo the artist has been beaten up. Combo is French born. His father is a Lebanese Christian father and his mother a Moroccan Muslim:
It seems like something one would be hard pressed to disagree with: the word “coexist,” written on a wall using a Muslim crescent as the letter “C,” a Star of David as the letter “X,” and a Christian cross as a “T.”
But in Paris, this particular iteration of the popular inscription—here, created by the street artist Combo, who also pasted a life-size photo of himself next to it—didn’t go down well with everybody. Le Monde reports that four young people asked the artist to remove it last weekend, and beat him up severely when he refused to do so.
Combo ended up with a dislocated shoulder and many bruises.
Nasty stuff. Who dunnit, Combo?
Combo declined to discuss the identity of his assailants. “It would only add fuel to the fire,” he told the French newspaper.
He writes on Facebook:
“I am deliberately being vague about the description of these cowards and where it all happened. To me, it doesn’t matter where they come from, what colour their skin is, what their religion or their political ideas are. In this context, all they represent is stupidity and ignorance.”
French street artist known as Combo was beaten by a group of Muslims in Paris
French Artist’s Calls For Peace End in Brutal Beating By Local Muslims
How do they know that?
Coexist Street Artist Promoting Tolerance of Muslims Attacked by Muslims
French Graffiti Artist Beaten By #NotAllMuslims For ‘Coexist’ Tag
Why guess? Why assume? When did journalism stop sticking to the facts?
Combo says:
“First I thought I was French, but I quickly understood that I was Arab, then beur (French slang for second and third generation North African), now I’m told I’m Muslim.”
‘Nuff said.
Anorak
Posted: 14th, February 2015 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
More on how university is all about being compliant and comfortable. Marquette University are censoring the speakers:
Professor John McAdams is being stripped of tenure by Marquette University for writing a blog post that administrators characterize as inaccurate and irresponsible.
Inaccuaray is bad form. But irresponsible? How? Says who?
McAdams is 69-year-old, a Harvard Ph.D. who taught courses on American politics and public policy.
Marquette University Dean Richard C. Holtz, explains:
The incident that McAdams blogged about happened on October 28, 2014. Cheryl Abbate, a graduate student in philosophy who was leading a class called Theory of Ethics, was teaching undergraduates about John Rawls. She asked for examples of current events to which Rawlsian philosophy could be applied.
“One student offered the example of gay marriage as something that Rawls’ Equal Liberty Principle would allow because it would not restrict the liberty of others and therefore should not be illegal. Ms. Abbate noted that this was a correct way to apply Rawls’ Principle and is said to have asked ‘does anyone not agree with this?’ Ms. Abbate later added that if anyone did not agree that gay marriage was an example of something that fits the Rawls’ Equal Liberty Principle, they should see her after class.”
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Anorak
Posted: 11th, February 2015 | In: Reviews | Comment
Few of us in the UK had heard of Charlie Hebdo, the satirical French magazine, before so many of its staff were murdered by Islamists. David Cameron announced on Twitter that he was joining that ‘unity’ rally in Paris “to celebrate the values of Charlie Hebdo“.
Everyone was for free speech and a free Press. The French so love it their creepy sounding Minister of Culture hands state subsidies to French newspapers. With money comes control.
France’s two most prestigious newspapers, “Le Monde” and “Le Figaro”, received more than €16 million in government subsidies each… The catholic newspaper “La Croix” got over €10 million while the communist “L’Humanité” received almost €7 million in public subsidies, the Ministry’s website shows…
The regional daily “Ouest France” follows close behind Le Monde and Le Figaro on the on the list, receiving over €10.4 million in 2013…France’s press sector also benefits from a low 2.1% rate of VAT. In addition, French journalists enjoy advantageous tax privileges which are supposed to compensate for professional expenses… [full list here].
That freedom of the press looks a lot like state control.
Add to that the assaults on free speech on univerity campuses, the attempt to shut down debate on global warming, no debate on gay marriage and – well, you name it – and you wonder what Cameroa and every other leader who declared they are Charlie Hebdo thought they were supporting.
And so to the news that Wiltshire Police “have apologised after an officer visited a newsagent requesting details of customers who bought French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in the wake of the Paris massacre”.
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Anorak
Posted: 10th, February 2015 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
Der Unterrichter (The Teacher), c. 1980 (drawing for Rigor Mortis, published in 1983 by Diogenes Verlag AG, Zürich)
“When Yik Yak was created it was intended to give everyone an equal voice. No one user would have an advantage over another based on followers or popularity and post,” so says the website for Yik Yak, a new app. where users can post anonymously.
The Badger Herald reports:
While Yik Yak activity at the University of Wisconsin has not become troublesome enough to warrant any response from officials, it is not the case at other institutions such as Clemson University, where, in response to concerns over racial insensitivity, the administration is considering a ban on the app, according to The Tiger News, Clemson’s student newspaper.
What are they saying?:
“I feel like it is really an outlet for people in the sorority system to make themselves feel better about what sorority they are in by putting down other ones,” she said. “It was very disheartening. We’d go to chapter and hear girls talking about what people said [about us on Yik Yak].”
She said the anonymity of the app caused people to write comments that are far more offensive than on other sites. “No one would ever tweet out or Facebook post the stuff they said on Yik Yak,” she said.
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Anorak
Posted: 3rd, February 2015 | In: Reviews | Comment
Debate is dying. Free speech is under threat. We are living in the Age of Comfort. We are the willful blind. Is that new? No, says Margaret Heffernan. She examines what “we could know, and should know, but don’t know because it makes us feel better not to know… the more tightly we focus, the more we leave out.”
We enjoy the peace of mind darkness brings.
She comments on the message:
“[Media companies] know that when we buy a newspaper or a magazine, we aren’t looking for a fight… The search for what is familiar and comfortable underlies our media consumption habits in just the same way as it makes us yearn for Mom’s mac ’n’ cheese. The problem with this is that everything outside that warm, safe circle is our blind spot.”
And it’s neural:
To build that sense of self-worth, we surround ourselves with people and information that confirm it. Overwhelmingly, we prefer people like ourselves – and there is a solid physiological reason why. The brain can’t handle all the information it is presented with, so it prioritises. What gets a head start is information that is already familiar – and what is most familiar to us is us.
So, we feel most comfortable with people and ideas we already know. Just like Amazon’s recommendation engine or eHarmony’s online dating programmes, our brain searches for matches, because building on the known makes for highly efficient processing. At a trivial level, this preference shows up in consumer preference for products whose names share their initials: Carol likes Coke but Peter prefers Pepsi. More seriously, over time our neural networks, just like our opinions and ideologies, become deeper but also narrower.
That is as true for us, when we choose media we agree with, as it is for party leaders who give priority to editors who agree with them. Everyone is biased in favour of themselves; it may be one reason why, despite decades of diversity programmes, women and minorities have made so little progress inside corporations..
As Colm O’Gorman, one of the first people to uncover abuse in the Catholic Church in Ireland, told me: “We make ourselves powerless when we pretend we don’t know.” But just because wilful blindness is endemic does not make it irresistible. Roy Spence, a Texan advertising executive, refused to work with Enron even as the rest of the world beat a path to its door. How did he see what others missed? He thought a lifetime of seeing through the eyes of the powerless gave him different perspectives. “My sister had cystic fibrosis and I used to wheel her to school every morning,” he told me. “I could see people pitying us, oblivious to the richness of our relationship. It made me ask, then as now: if they’re missing so much about us, what I am missing about them?” That internal dialogue is what Hannah Arendt called thinking.
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Anorak
Posted: 2nd, February 2015 | In: Reviews | Comment
Are all students rapsits and absuers-in-waiting? Spiked reports that 26 British univestities banned the Sun and the Daily Star as part of the ‘No More Page 3 campaign’; 21 student unions forbid the student body from listening to Robin Thicke song Blurred Lines on campus; Bristol University’s student union banned sales of Charlie Hebdo – the magazine that became the totem of free speech was banned because it would fail the college’s ‘safe space’ policy.
Eighteen per cent of unions have “safe space” policies, protecting students from material deemed offensive, and more than two-thirds of these were judged to place significant restrictions on freedom of speech.
Sheffield Student Union banned Eminem. Students at Oxford Univesity banned a debate on abortion. The UCL Student Union banned the college’s Nietzsche Club. King’s College Students banned Israel. The University of East Anglia Students banned a UKIP MP. The NUS banned free Speech and refsued to condemn for fear of looking Islamophobic. And our favourite was the London School of Economics, which banned T-shirts.
The assumption is that allowing anything that a loon or agenda-driven censor could decry as ‘racist’, ‘sexist’ or ‘homophobic’ would trigger race riots and convince slack-jawed male students that women’s rights, equality and debate are wrong.
It also assumes that the colleges will be complicit in any resulting crimes, having failed to police free thought they will make victims less aware of the perils to their physical and mental wellbeing. Student are no longer adults with free thhought and passionate ideas. They are idiots how must be coddled.
Ashe Schow is astounded:
For the past several years, activists have been telling us that any suggestion relating to protecting oneself from becoming a victim is victim-blaming. Tell a woman not to walk down dark alleys at night, and you’re essentially telling her that it’s her fault if she ends up being assaulted, robbed or murdered.
But now, outright bans on risky behavior — all in the interest of protecting women — are suddenly coming back into fashion.
First, sorority women at the University of Virginia were banned from attending parties with boys this weekend by their own National Panhellenic Conference. The reason for the ban, which carries undisclosed sanctions if broken, was “safety concerns,” due to sexual assault allegations in the past.
The message is clear: Keep women from partying and they won’t be sexually assaulted.
How is that not victim blaming?
As if the U.Va. ban wasn’t bad enough (it was based off of a discredited rape allegation in Rolling Stone, after all), Dartmouth has decided to ban hard liquor on campus — in part to cut down on sexual assaults.
It was just last year that telling women not to drink so much was considered victim blaming, but now it’s okay?
We seem to be going back in time; telling women where they can go, whom they can associate with — even what they can drink. At least it’s all in the name of protecting us poor, fragile ladies, am I right?
It’s not just the ladies. It’s all student minds.
Photo via.
Anorak
Posted: 2nd, February 2015 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
Robert Huth was born in Biesdorf, East Berlin. He’s a footballer about to move between English Premiership clubs, signing for Leicester City from Stoke City, having also played for Chelsea. He’s a big unit, tough and aware his talent lies in stopping goals rather than creating them. He’s witty, too.
On Twitter, Huth has offered the opinions: “Crying on the pitch should merit a three-month ban”; “Let’s all welcome Jon Walters [Huth’s Stoke teammate] to Twitter and congratulate him on learning to write”; and warned one player not to be such a “big girl”.
See. Witty.
But not everyone likes his brand of humour. Here’s the headline on the BBC:
Robert Huth: Stoke defender banned over gender comments
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Anorak
Posted: 1st, February 2015 | In: Sports | Comment (1)
Have you been called names online by a mentally negligible with access to the internet? Has some no-mark tweeted something you disagree with? Were you offended? Well, before you call the police and become a nark, take a look at this handy guide to dealing with online abuse:
We’d add ‘ gold them up to ridcule’ to the chart.
But then it was brought to our attention by Brendan O’Neill, who is a*@*£$! !%****t ****!
Anorak
Posted: 31st, January 2015 | In: Reviews | Comment
Jamie Reynolds, 23, murdered 17-year-old Georgia Williams. He was sentenved to life imprisonment.
In sentencing Reynolds at Stafford Crown Court, Mr Justice Alan Wilkie told him he “had the potential to progressing to become a serial killer”.
The Daily Mail notes:
After his arrest, detectives found 16,800 images and 72 videos of extreme pornography on his computer. Some of the images were doctored pictures of girls and women he knew, with ropes digitally drawn around their necks. He had penned up to 40 short stories with graphic descriptions of sexual violence against women and had also written a script detailing a girl’s murder.
Reynolds planned for murder:
After taking a series of innocent pictures of the teenager, Reynolds persuaded her to stand on the box with the rope around her neck. He then bound Georgia’s hands together before kicking the box away causing the pretty teenage RAF cadet to asphyxiate. After she died, Reynolds – who hoarded hardcore ‘snuff’ movies featuring sexual killings – stripped Georgia and abused her lifeless body.
The Mail’s reference to the victim’s look is absurd. The paper adds:
In court it emerges that Reynolds began hunting for clips of women being strangled six years before the attack. When he was arrested police found 16,800 images and 72 videos of extreme pornography on his computer.
Reynolds had previous. It emerged in court Reynolds was handed a police caution in 2008, aged 17, for trying to strangle another teenage girl.
The IPCC has announced that Devon and Cornwall Police are investigating West Mercia’s handling of the case.
But what about the porn? The Mail makes a link between it and Reynolds’ actions:
Lord Thomas, who threw out Reynolds’ appeal against his whole life term last year, said the case ‘left me in no doubt at all that the peddling of pornography on the internet had a dramatic effect on the individual’.
He added: ‘What is available to download and to see is simply horrific and it played a real part in the way in which this particular murder was carried out.’
The Mail then editorialises:
He told the Commons justice committee the crime in May 2013 had been influenced – and intensified – by pornography. It was hard to believe, he said, that Reynolds could have come up with his sickening plan without first reading about similar fantasies or offences online.
But he could have read books, magazines of even the Mail’s report on how he committed his crime:
He even set up a homemade gallows made from an upturned red recycling box beneath a rope which was attached to the loft hatch.
Got that? Ok, now away you go.
Jamie Reynolds is a depraved killer. He looked and hoarded repulsive images. So. Eveyrone who looks at such eimages must be suspected of being a killer-in-waiting. they are guilty in thought. And that goes for Daily Mail readers who can enjoy such stories as:
And that’s if Mail readers aren’t being invited to ogle pre-teen girls.
Jamie Reynolds didn’t just look at porn. He also made up stories. But can only killer be made to represent all of us? If you don’t trust humanity it can:
Michael Ellis, a barrister and Tory MP, said the Lord Chief Justice’s evidence was significant because judges knew better than almost anyone about the driving forces behind offences…
He added: ‘If the impression he has been left with, having dealt with some of the most serious cases, that extreme pornography is influencing some crimes, then I think that is very persuasive.’
It might be persuasive. But that doesn’t make it right. The Mail then adds:
In October 2012, Mark Bridger was jailed for a whole-life term after being found guilty of killing five-year-old April Jones a year earlier. He had searched for images of child abuse and rape.
And in May 2013, Stuart Hazell was jailed for murdering 12-year-old Tia Sharp after scouring the internet for vile child porn using terms such as ‘violent forced rape’ and ‘incest’.
The link between what you see and what you do is flimsy. Do video games make you violent? Did video nasties turn the sane into rapists and human flesh eaters? Those 1980s video nasties are now sold as classic movies. The logic that links viewing with doing is shaky.
In 1930 Sergei Eisenstein was bemused as to why the British Board of Film Censors (BBFC) bbanned his Battleship Potemkin, appraising the censors:
“One of them is blind and probably deals with the silent films; another one is deaf and so gets the sound films; the third one chose to die while I was in London.”
So ban it. Ban the video nasties. Ban the computer games that look so real. Ban the porn. Prevent everyone from seeing lest individuals confuse entertainment for reality and run amuck. People are so slack-jawed and empty that watching a film will turn them and you into a murderer. People do not think for themselves. The censors will view it, decide on its worth and ban it.
What a terrible view of humanity we are being sold.
We should tolerate individual fantasies that are not acted upon with harmful consequences. Don’t ban it. Debate it. Hold it up for discussion, mockery, riducle and question.
Anorak
Posted: 29th, January 2015 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
Compare and contrast the views of Amal Clooney, wife to actor George Clooney.
On January 11 2015, Amal was at the 72nd Golden Globes, an acting AGM at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.
She sported a “Je Suis Charlie”, a nod to the journalists murdered for expressing an opinion.
Free Speech. No Buts.
On Janaury 28, Amal Clooney is a member of a legal team representing for Armenia at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, eastern France. Clooney is among the lawyers arguing at the European Court of Human Rights against a Turkish man convicted in Switzerland for denying the 1915 Armenian genocide. She is challenging a decision that ruled the manÂ’s right to free expression was violated.
Je Suis Charlie Hebdo. They just don’t want to be him.
Hey, it’s our right to demand an edn to free speech!
Back to the drawing board.
Anorak
Posted: 28th, January 2015 | In: Celebrities | Comments (2)
Lawrence Krauss, Foundation Professor of the School of Earth and Space Exploration and Inaugural Director of the Origins Project at Arizona State University, on free speech:
Hate speech involves people, not ideas. No idea should be sacred in the modern world. Instead, in order for us to progress as a species, every claim, every idea should be subject to debate, intelligent discussion, and when necessary ridicule. Satire is perhaps one of the most important gifts we have to inspire us to re-examine our own lives and our own ideologies. If every other area of human endeavor is open to ridicule, then certainly so should religion. The notion that a cartoon, which presents an image of a historical figure, is so blasphemous to provoke violence is repugnant to anyone who believes that free and intelligent discourse is the basis of a civilized world.
This means that we need to encourage even ridicule of the sacred Qur’an in the public media. The more frequently and openly this appears, the less threatening it will seem, and the more acceptable it will be for believers to actually intellectually engage rather than emotionally and violently act.
They all are Charlie Hebdo. But none want to be him…
Anorak
Posted: 28th, January 2015 | In: Reviews | Comment
Salman Rushdie has been taking on the ‘but Brigade’, whose newfound committment to free speech after the Charlie Hebdo massacre has been steadily vanishing, who see moral equivalence and relativism in the murders:
“The French satirical tradition has always been very pointed and very harsh, and still is, you know. The thing that I really resent is the way in which these, our dead comrades … who died using the same implement that I use, which is a pen or pencil, have been almost immediately vilified and called racists and I don’t know what else… Both John F Kennedy and Nelson Mandela use the same three-word phrase which in my mind says it all, which is, ‘Freedom is Indivisible’. You can’t slice it up, otherwise it ceases to be freedom. You can dislike Charlie Hedbo. But the fact that you dislike them has nothing to do with their right to speak.”
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Anorak
Posted: 25th, January 2015 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
Saudi Arabia is an ally of the UK, the country whose leaders cry “Je Suis Charlie”.
Is Saudi Arabia a dangerous place? No. So long as you stop thinking, it’s fine. The Foreign Offices advises travellers:
There is a heightened threat from terrorism….
Cases of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) in patients from Saudi Arabia continue to be reported to the World Health Organization. For the latest information and advice, see the website of the National Travel Health Network and Centre (NaTHNaC).
The British Embassy receives regular requests for help from pilgrims performing Hajj or Umrah, particularly in relation to disputes and dissatisfaction with tour operators. The Saudi Ministry of Health has advised certain groups of people to postpone undertaking the Hajj and Umrah pilgrimages in 2014 in light of the MERS virus cases. It has also provided advice for those that are undertaking the pilgrimage to minimise the risk of contracting and spreading the virus. See Pilgrimage and the National Travel Health Network and Centre’s Advice for pilgrims: Hajj and Umrah.
Take out comprehensive travel and medical insurance before you travel.
The big threats are from foreign agents of terror, MERS and a lack of travel insurance. And:
You should respect local traditions, customs, laws and religions at all times and be aware of your actions to ensure that they do not offend…
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Anorak
Posted: 20th, January 2015 | In: Reviews | Comment