It's official: Blogging is a dangerous business 2009 was a bad year for freedom of speech across the world, with journalists and bloggers getting the worst of it. According to a report (pdf) released last week by internationally respected organisation Reporters sans Frontieres (RSF), journalists bore the brunt of the crackdown – but there was also a sharp rise in action …
Welcome to the importance of anonymous speech. Nobody should ever be afraid of words, they're just words. And when politicians claim words are dangerous, it means they can't discredit or disprove the other persons viewpoint, so they seek to suppress it.
Watch the current talk around Labour MPs call for a secret ballot on the leadership. There should have been one when Brown became PM, but they let Blair simply hand Brown power. There should have been the candidate ballot 2 years ago at the Labour conference, but Brown stopped the ballot paper being circulated. There should have been one last year, again he suppressed it.
If he would win a ballot then why is he afraid of permitting one, If he wouldn't win a ballot he has no place being leader.
The £5K compensation for the MK journo is welcome, but the NUJ article doesn't mention what, if any, disciplinary action was taken against the plod who acted illegally. Is he still a plod? Has he been disciplined, demoted, sacked, 'retired sick' or what? Could El Reg find out?
Indeed, 2009 was the year was the one where I received not one but 2 separate complaints followed by legal letters about comments left on my blog. Apparently I am liable if I do not act swiftly in removing them.
Now, I'm a big woose and after telling them to go fuck themselves several times I removed them
that way. The linked article did not say what the journo was actually charged with. It wouldn't have been 'taking photos' it would have been something like 'causing a disturbance', 'resisting arrest' or some such. The legal argument then is over whether the events leading up to the charge were sufficient. The police see things like that as getting off on a legal technicality, so there would be no reason to discipline the officer in question. As far as plod is concerned the journo should have complied with the request then pursued the matter quietly. He brought it on himself for being bolshy iow.
Muscleguy,
The fact that he was NOT charged with anything but was still hauled away for doing nothing which he shouldn't have been doing, is what the whole story is about, for it is an abuse and an assault upon freedom by those who are paid and are fully expected to uphold the laws of the land and to protect one's rights to freedom. Anything less is to admit that you are born merely as a slave to the System and that will have everyone looking for the System's Levers to bring it crashing down, or ITs Leader or Leaders to replace them with a Better Beta Leader or Leaders, or more Simply and Much Smarter, to Provide them with a New ReprogramMING Program for them to Perform Infinitely Better with Revisionary Betas. ........ which incidentally, is a Novel Sublime Concept and Civil CyberSpace Project Presently Offered to Generate the Future to the BBC, for their Comment and Review, a copy of which is presently occupying an IntelAIgent Space Place in Global Minds ....... https://www.bbcglobalminds.com/cs/forums/p/2310/20164.aspx#20164 [a closed forum requiring registration to view and participate on, but the post is also transparently Hosted/Mirrored/Ghosted on ITs Source Site for Any and All to View and throw Rocks and Stones at] If you have any problems finding it, then it is easily found here on this thread, just by asking for directions/virtual co-ordinates. IT really is no more difficult than that, to know of anything worth knowing.
Give somebody with not enough knowledge a little power, and it goes straight to their heads and overwhelms them, leaving them thinking that they can do whatever they want in the most extreme of cases. It would be laughable if it were not so perversely subversive.
And if you want a good current example of that, with a charge or indictment to match it in the extreme, how about this one ...... regarding a Weapon of Mass Destruction ...... http://cryptome.org/abdulmutallab/007.pdf ..... which is a little extreme given the nature of the weapon/failed non-viable device.
Are they putting crack in the water over there, for they are definitely on something rather than being smart and onto something, for as we know and has been admitted, even right up to the top of the chain of command tree, they don't do joining up the dots with intelligence, and thus are prey to ..... well, if it were to be a Hollywood teen scare movie, it would be most probably touted as "Attack of the Crazies" or be one of those so tackily bad that it is good, left of field indy viral hit sensations a la Tarantino meme.
"Better Beta Leader or Leaders, or more Simply and Much Smarter, to Provide them with a New ReprogramMING Program for them to Perform Infinitely Better with Revisionary Betas. ........ which incidentally, is a Novel Sublime Concept and Civil CyberSpace Project Presently Offered to Generate the Future to the BBC, for their Comment and Review, a copy of which is presently occupying an IntelAIgent Space Place in Global Minds ....."
I watched Dr Who Christmas special and it was all meandering, badly structured, full of self references, and incoherent narrative, and I wonder who on earth could have written that?
It was you wasn't it?
Please, don't write any more Dr Who Christmas specials, amanfrommars, please please please, no more.
Crikey, that was quite a leap, AC, which would have done you a great deal of harm, had it needed to be true rather than just wild speculation and a viable enough figment of your imagination. Bravo.
But then I suppose you'd be thinking the writer might say that anyway.
"they are definitely on something" -
on something that hits the Grey matter just in time to talk widely about Intelligent Deeds, may I suppose? Just look at his leg, all burned out...
On the other side, did the spokesman for the Host meating also have family?
Just talk about blogging (-;
And, really, the magestic phrase for those journos who has a somehow maybe nervous contact with a policeman is: MAY I EXPLAIN MY PROFESSIONAL DUTIES, SIR? If you may not, he must be having an order to sniff in all the dope around the stage, including you, and you can change the word "dope" into something more or less relevant... in this special case. Now say, will the sheriff report to the press-gang YES, Ls&Gs, THIS WAS ME WHO ORDERED SGT X TO FORBID MR Y EXPLAIN HIS DUTIES? Of course not.
38 years on duty, sharks' teeth left deep scars on the lens... 5000 pounds a night... Police should know wider about this way of getting more profit than was supposed from selling the picture.
Is Man programmed for IT or by IT?*
"and toward the end of 2008 senior Labour politician Hazel Blears attacked bloggers in general for lowering the tone of political debate."
That has me having a hearty laugh at the arrogance displayed and the ignorance dispensed by a typical senior Labour politician who would all know more than a little about the low tone of political debate.
It is perfectly understandable though, given that they are a dying parasitic breed fighting desperately for their ivory towered feather nests and nest eggs and future relevance in the field of good governance and public service rather than having to pretend that it is not really all about private personal gain.
* Of course, they are, for they are not clever enough to do IT for themselves.
Think yourself into the plod policing the accident. There's a group of people, one of them is shooting photos like there is no tomorrow. If he is allowed to continue the rest of them might get the idea that it is ok to take photos in this country, then it's camera phones galore. We can't have that, what about terrorism? So the guy gets approached and told to can it, but he is a journo. Plod is on a no win situation here, if he backs down, and a sergeant to boot, then the hoi polloi are really going to go nuts with those camera phones. They might even snap him! So it then becomes beholden on Plod to arrest the guy.
Can't have the public thinking they can do what they want, can we?
/channelling plod
I like your thinking - but in the UK that leaves 4 real choices...
1: Labour
2: Tories
3: Emigrate
4: Suicide
Very few people vote FOR either Labour or the Tories but simply AGAINST whichever bunch of monkeys they hate most at the moment, I've met very few people who actually have the faintest idea what either party's manifesto actually is; they're not voting for any particular ideas or policies but voting blue because they hate red.
Option 3 looks better every day... maybe Switzerland, at least you're in the right country to get some assistance with option 4 if it really gets bad enough.
The problem with this, election to solve whats happening argument, is that it overlooks a fundamental flaw in democracy, which is democracy can be totally wiped out once all the parties you can choose from have the same core motives. Which is exactly what we have now. At a fundamental level the very act of seeking power over someone else therefore inevitably means forcing them to conform to the wishes of the person with power. Its an inherently unfair act of control. The problem is everyone in politics seeks power over others, resulting in this continuous push towards an ever more Authoritarian control. Worse still, Authoritarianism always slides into Totalitarianism when freedom of speech is increasingly repressed as it is now.
Therefore the election myth we are sold now, acts like a means to fool us all and placate us as a population into thinking we have a choice in the matter. The more I've realized whats really going on, the more I've seen this destruction of privacy, liberty and freedom isn't going to be solved by elections. Only freedom of speech can push back against the people in power to provide a feedback mechanism to limit their excesses. Without free speech, we slide into an utter nightmare as we are doing now.
but out of all the people I have ever met, the ones I have never liked, and truly despise are all government workers.
They are the parasites in any nation, they don't do anything to improve things. The only function of government workers seems to be to make matters worse for everyone else and charge us for it, either in our time or via taxation. There are just no redeeming attributes to any government worker.
Hmm, I think the universe is telling me something, I need a nation without government.
>for being unlawfully held in a cell after trying to take photographs of a car accident while working for the MKNews.
Although the article is loosely about freedom of the press I don't see the relevance of this man being a journalist. Maybe it a is a wrong assumption, but I assume he was approached by plod simply for taking photographs without them being aware he was a news photographer. Seems to me that this incident is not related to freedom of the press but personal freedom which in my opinion should be defended above all else.
"Hmm, I think the universe is telling me something, I need a nation without government." ...... Anonymous Coward Posted Thursday 7th January 2010 14:28 GMT
AC, If youcan be bothered and would like to exercise and strengthen/destroy a few brain cells :-) the last paragraph Posted by amanfromMars on Jan 07, 2010 @ 05:02 AM here ...... http://sluggerotoole.com/index.php/weblog/comments/and-what-the-robinson-story-was-really-about/P100/ ....... tells you of some ....... well, let us just say LOVEly MKUltraSensitive Quantum Communications Beta MetaDataBase Field Testing on Powerful Stealthy Control Parameters and Protocols...... where LOVE is Live Operational Virtual Environment.
And No, it is NOT Known to the Cabinet, for they are not Cleared at the Levels Required for their Need to Know, for whenever the Truth be told, they are only amateur part timers elected to serve a short term as media puppets for those who wield Global Power, and thus are unfit for ITs Better Purposes, which may be a harsh judgement but well warranted and born of past experiences and valuable lessons learned with the breed. Hence the phasing in of Absolutely Fabulous New Technology to phase them out of the Future Picture for they are no longer needed these Days in a Progressive and Revolutionary Binary Age of Brave and Bold New Digital World Order with Instant Transparent Communications.
And don't be telling anyone whom you heard that from, or they'll be be putting one of strait jackets on you and hauling you off to the funny farm.:-)
And Northern Ireland is a Prime Test Bed because a) the population are extremely aware in the deeper perceptive sense of things by virtue probably of decades of trauma b) there's a nice new high tech Security Centre to rival anything Hollywood could dream up and deliver for Real c) it has a new fledgling administration taking over from a Government that failed it d) It is a very convenient size to with all of the trials and tribulations of any much larger nation in microcosm, making it a simple matter of putting Protocols in Place for Miniature Simulation of Successful Parameters which then only need to be Introduced on a Bigger Scale for Vast Populations.
And all of that is just what you are permitted to presently know and it just the tip of the iceberg with regard to what is actually also happening, but then that has always been the Nature of Sensitive AIR&dD Work as the Enigmatic History of any Colossus will always tells All.
>It is perfectly understandable though, given that they are a dying parasitic breed fighting desperately for their ivory towered feather nests and nest eggs and future relevance in the field of good governance and public service rather than having to pretend that it is not really all about private personal gain.<
God help me, I understood and agreed with amfm1.
I'm just hoping The Singularity arrives before the Real Internet dies.
I hope RSF are more diligent in their accusations of censorship than most of the other usual suspects.
I remember years ago learning about Amnesty International's website being blocked in Saudi Arabia because of this or the other. I felt opportune to write to Amnesty to tell them that I had just read that on their own official website while sitting in my office in Saudi, going through our Saudi ISP, etc. Curiously I never got a reply back from them.
What they did keep blocking was the very local French newspaper I used to read, and other random sites like that. You were presented with a notice and an online form that you could fill in if you felt the site was blocked in error. I kept doing that and it worked well as they unblocked the sites within the next day, but then every month or so it would get blocked again, leading me to think that they got their blacklists from some crappy commercial provider.
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