European Political News

If you are following your own technorati "Authority" score you may have noticed a decline in the last few days.

It's that time - 6 months since the Usmanov imbroglio, and all the links are dropping out of the Technorati scores. I'm down by 50 in 4 days.

The Technorati rankings don't matter a damn, but perhaps it is a reminder - 6 months later - that it is time to pick up the Freedom of Expressions cudgels once again.

The dodgy libel laws are still on the books, and Shillings Lawyers are still to be seen strutting about bullying people into self-censorship on the basis of untested and unproven allegations that material that happens to be disliked by rich clients is defamatory.

I haven't forgotten; neither should any of us.

And I'm looking for more nominees for the Usmanov Schillings Duck-n-Cluck awards.

Here we go again. We have a government demanding that we let the power exist to lock people up for 42 days, and making “it won’t happen very often” an excuse, and we have a police force demanding that the crimes that have been solved because of 5 million records on the DNA database and nearly as many CCTV Cameras justify putting us under more and more control. Signally, the Association of Chief Police Officers is calling for: a debate on whether to expand the current database - of DNA details taken from crime suspects - to cover all people in the UK. This is the wrong place to focus that debate. The question should be whether we scale the DNA database down so that it does not impinge on the human rights of individuals. As things stand, we have the rights of the innocent being routinely abused in DNA samples being retained. The same goes for the guilty - it is wrong to routinely keep DNA records when the sentence for a crime has been served. There are exceptions to this, but not many. Meanwhile we have a challenge in the European Court to the right for the police to retain the DNA of the innocent, purely because they happen to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time when an enquiry was in progress. The argument is based on how many crimes have been solved using DNA techniques. Solve the Problem not the Symptom However, we know that treating the symptoms of crime will not ultimately fix the problem. It did not fix it when Michael Howard told us “prison works”, and it has not worked for the 2 N million extra fixed penalty notices handed out to increase the safety of drivers who were not trained properly originally. We must address the causes, and that requires members of our society to take decisions not to commit crime in the first place. So where does that leave us? In short, at present we are on a helter-skelter to greater and greater state control of the individual - in a rush to be seen to address a panicky fear of crime in ways that are unlikely to fix the root cause anyway. (more…)

I’m delighted to announce two new Internet Awards for services beyond the call of duty in the area of suppression of Free Expression on the Internet in the UK. The inaugural Bear-Faced Usmanov for internet bullying is awarded to Joseph Chikelue Obi, while the first Double Headed Schilling for being a soft-touch goes to Netcetera - The Occasional Internet Host. The Bear-Faced Usmanov is for extreme efforts in closing down websites which are criticising you by threat without evidence. Meanwhile The Double Headed Schilling is awarded to webhosts who roll over before such threats. The first awards are in connection with the case of Joseph Chikelue Obi and the Quackometer, with internet hosting (sometimes) company Netcetera. The whole thing was documented by the Register, from where the text extracts below are quoted. Quack! Quack! Quackety-Quack! The Citation for Joseph Chikelue Obi “A discredited doctor has forced an ISP to silence a website that aimed to debunk claims made by his “Royal College of Alternative Medicine” (RCAM). The website, Quackometer, run by Oxfordshire IT worker Andy Lewis, was shuttered by ISP Netcetera on Monday following threats to sue for defamation from Joseph Chikelue Obi. Lewis recently targeted self-proclaimed professor, “Eminent Black British Human Rights Crusader” and “Undisputed Doyen of Medical Politics”, Joseph Chikelue Obi. Quackometer featured a series of articles lampooning claims made by RCAM in its blog section. Obi describes himself as the provost of RCAM, a Dublin-based “empowerment body for advanced wellness consultants”. (more…) Previous in series

I have just spotted that the Egyptian Sandmonkey blog has been back for some time (since August - and may have gone again). Blogrolled, regardless. It was the Sandmonkey who provided a key piece of evidence that the “Motoons” controversy (which has just resurfaced) was - basically - a put up job, and the resulting demonstrations, deaths, embassy burnings and general outrage was essentially down to troublemaking. The Sandmonkey, whose blog is summarised like this: The writer of this blog is an extremely cynical, snarky, pro-US, secular, libertarian, disgruntled sandmonkey. If this is your cup of tea, please enjoy your stay here. If not, please sod off. Support the Neo-con American Right-wing Zionist Christian Imperialist Conspiracy in the Middle-east! provided photographs of seven of the Mohammed Cartoons appearing in an Egyptian Newspaper (El Fagr) fully six weeks before the first delegation of Danish Imams visited the Middle East to stir up protest - with very little reaction by comparison. It is notable that there was no campaign mounted to boycott Egypt at the time ! I have been wondering whether to take part in the move to republish the cartoon (of Mohammed with a Bomb in his turban) as a statement of solidarity with the cartoonist who had been the subject of a murder plot. Some may call that statement of solidarity provocative; in my opinion the best way to protect freedom of debate is to debate freely. And it struck me - the picture has been on this blog since last June, as part of an article which was my paean for the Sandmonkey blog when it closed down then. So, if you’re going to be offended by a photograph of a cartoon of Mohammed with a Bomb in his Turban (which I take to refer to the image of Islam projected by terror movements), appearing in a popular Arabic Newspaper in the largest Arab country in the world as an illustration for an article criticizing the cartoons which caused no widespread protests (before various people started fomenting trouble six weeks later) - then don’t click the link; otherwise do. This is the link to the article about the Sandmonkey blog. Tags: egyptian sandmonkey, el fagr, motoons, mohammed cartoons