UK News

In my You Can't Read This Book , I gave 10 rules for fighting back against dictatorial regimes and movements. The simplest, and the most important was:

If you are frightened, at least have the guts to say so. Once one did not write the word liberal and add hypocrite . Since the Rushdie Affair, the reflex has become automatic. The worst aspect of the fear the ayatollahs spread was that Western intellectuals were afraid of admitting that they were afraid. If they had been honest, they would have forced society to confront the fact of censorship. As it was, their silence made the enemies of liberalism stronger.

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Atheist students at a London South Bank University have had a poster featuring a flying spaghetti monster banned by union officials, out of fear that religious students would be easily offended by it.

The South Bank Atheist Society (SBAS) poster featured the monster in place of God in a mock-up of Michelangelo's famous Creation of Adam fresco from the Sistine Chapel, but it was removed from the freshers' fair last week.

South Bank Atheist Society president Choe Ansari said:

This incident is just one of a catalogue of attempts to censor our society. I never expected to face such blatant censorship and fragile sensibilities at university. I thought this would be an institution where I could challenge beliefs and in turn be challenged.

All I have seen is religious sensibilities trumping all other rights with no space for argument, challenge or reasoned debate. It is not what I expected when I came to university.

Union censors at the London South Bank University removed the posters from the society's stall overnight and then barred representatives from printing off more, ludicrosuly citing the visibility of Adam's genitals as offensive. But when society members offered to blur out the genitals, they were told the problem with the poster concerned religious offence.

Update: Apologies

13th February 2013. See article from politics.co.uk

London Southbank University student union has unreservedly apologised after staff censored an atheist society's Flying Spaghetti Monster poster. The student union said in a statement:

It is not currently nor has it ever been the union policy to censor student groups or the materials they produce and as such this was not an authorised act and we have now ensured that staff know that they should not do this,

In recognising the distress caused to the society by our actions we have met with and apologised to The Atheist Society president and vice president.

The Atheist Society are as welcome at the students' union as any group or society and we completely respect and support their right to freedom of expression and free speech.

The British government is attempting to block all online extremist videos that they claim are helping to radicalise impressionable young men. The Home Office is in talks with internet companies to block violent religious films that are hosted abroad. The plans have been drawn up by James Brokenshire, the ex-security minister who is now the immigration minister.

One minister told the BBC that about 2,000 Europeans are thought to be fighting in Syria, including at least 200 known to the British security services. It is feared that fighters returning to the UK will seek to radicalise young men in particular to launch terrorist attacks both at home and abroad.

Since February 2010, the Counter Terrorism Internet Referral Unit, or CTIRU, has taken down more than 21,000 pieces of illegal terrorist online content. If the CTIRU and prosecutors deem material to be illegal it can be blocked from parts of the public sector, including schools and hospitals. But this does not extend to domestic users - and filters can be turned off.

James Brokenshire said

Through proposals from the extremism taskforce announced by the prime minister in November, we will look to further restrict access to material which is hosted overseas - but illegal under UK law - and help identify other harmful content to be included in family-friendly filters.

The Home Office also hopes it can also make it easier for people to report extremist content online.

Emma Carr, deputy director of campaign group Big Brother Watch, said:

Politicians and civil servants should not be deciding what we can see online. If content is to be blocked then it should be a court deciding that it is necessary and proportionate to do so.

Misreable Nottingham Council employees have stepped in to protect the city's reputation after a Bag a Slag night sparked phoney 'outrage'.

The Old Angel, in Stoney Street, Hockley, found itself at the centre of a media frenzy after it advertised the alternative speed dating night on Valentine's Day using the slogan bag a slag, grab a hag .

The event was pulled by the pub last night after the city council's licensing team said its licence could be taken away if it used inappropriate promotions .

A council spokesprat said the event could bring the city into disrepute and that the pub eventually saw sense .

Offsite Comment: Slags, Hagas and the Limit of Offence

9th February 2013. See article from strangethingsarehappening.co by David Flint

Here's the background. The Old Angel is a city centre pub in Nottingham. Smack in between the ultra trendy area of the Lace Market and the hipster haven of Hockley, it stands out as a defiant blot on an otherwise fashionable landscape, being a rough n ready punk rock pub. It's regular clientele are a motley crew of punks, metalheads and general alternative types, and it doubles up as a live venue for bands, who play upstairs -- we've run reviews of gigs held here from time to time. It's probably fair to say that this is a pub where you will either feel instantly at home or immediately alienated from, given how determinedly unfashionable it is.

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The French comedian at the centre of the quenelle iracism row has been banned from entering the UK, the Home Office has said.

Dieudonne M'bala M'bala had said he would visit the West Bromwich Albion striker, who faces a ban for performing the comic's quenelle gesture. The quenelle involves touching or gripping your shoulder with one hand while holding the palm of your other hand outstretched and pointing to the ground. Some describe it as a combination of the bras d'honneur with a bent arm (which means up yours ) and the Nazi salute.

Dieudonne has been convicted six times of hate speech against Jews.

A spokeswoman for the Home Office said:

We can confirm that Mr Dieudonne is subject to an exclusion order.

The Home Secretary will seek to exclude an individual from the UK if she considers that there are public policy or public security reasons to do so. 'Indecent'

One of Britain's major organisations has called for the censorship of the Jesus & Mo website. The website features a weekly comic strip in which the two religious characters debate and joke about the central tenets of Islam and Christianity.

The Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) published a statement claiming that the images were extremely offensive to believers of the two faiths and potentially inflammatory, and urged the website's operators to take down the comics at once. The MAB also claimed that the depiction of the two prophets was as insulting as those published in Denmark .

Ludicrously insisting that it respects freedom of speech and artistic expression, the MAB questioned the wisdom of any individual or organization that places at risk the dignity and values of anyone else, even if they might not hold those values.

Government officials are planning to review the historic D-notice system, which warns the media not to publish intelligence that might damage security, in the wake of the Guardian's stories about mass surveillance by the security services based on leaks from the US whistleblower Edward Snowden .

Sources said Jon Thompson, the permanent secretary of the Ministry of Defence, was setting up an inquiry into the future of the committee, raising fears that the voluntary censorship system also known as the DA-notice could be made compulsory.

The committee is supposed to be consulted when news organisations are considering publishing material relating to secret intelligence or the military. It is staffed by senior civil servants and media representatives, who give advice on the publication of sensitive stories. Minutes of a recent meeting reveal the comment: The events of the last few months had undoubtedly raised questions in some minds about the system's future usefulness.

In his latest report, its secretary, Air Vice-Marshal Andrew Vallance, raised concerns about the parallel publication of Snowden's revelations by newspapers around the world, noting that at the outset the Guardian had avoided engaging with the DA-notice system before publishing the first tranche of information .

The UK's gambling censor has asked the majo rISPs to warn their customers of the illegality of unlicensed gambling websites, and the ISPs have refused, arguing that it's up to the courts or Parliament to decide on such things.

It's nice to see the ISPs push back against the censorship and policing role that many in the British government think they should maintain.

According to the Financial Times, the Gambling Commission approached big ISPs including BT and TalkTalk asking for the insertion of splash pages when a customer is trying to access an unlicensed gambling site, in order to warn the customer that the service is illegal.

A TalkTalk spokeswoman quoted by the FT said:

We do not believe that it is for ISPs to decide what content customers should access. It is really important that there is either a proper legal framework when it comes to blocking access to sites, just like with copyright infringement, or that it is down to customer choice.

There is certainly a gathering momentum in the UK behind efforts to enforce the offline law online in new ways, and one has to wonder what the British government and its regulators will ask to block or police next.

All new web addresses registered in the UK will be screened for terms that signal or encourage serious sexual offences.

Nominet, the organisation that oversees all the UK's web addresses, said all domain names will be checked within 48 hours of registration. If an address is found to contain a prohibited term it will be suspended or de-registered. Existing web addresses will also come under the new rules.

Once a domain name is registered it will be examined by a computer algorithm looking for terms relating to sex crimes. Any address that is flagged as containing one of the prohibited words or phrases will then be checked by a human. This is to ensure that legitimate domain names are not suspended unnecessarily.

An example of a legitimate website, that might be flagged by the algorithm, is one set up to help victims of rape. Or where a flagged word is contained within another word. Any domain name containing a sex crime term that does not appear to have a legitimate use would be reported to the police.

Nominet took this course of action after the publication of a policy review by former director of public prosecutions Lord Macdonald. However the policy added that the firm should have no role in policing questions of taste or offensiveness on the internet .

Eleanor Bradley, chief operating officer at Nominet told the BBC that the registration service was not trying to censor the internet:

This is not about domain names that offend, or about swear words, it is about criminal acts relating to sexual offences, she said.

Nominet has notably not published the list of potentially prohibited terms.

French soccer star Nicolas Anelka, a friend of Dieudonne, provoked a furious reaction in France after he used the quenelle gesture in a Premier League match on Saturday.

Update: Fined and Suspended

28th February 2013. See article from telegraph.co.uk

Nicolas Anelka has been suspended for five matches, fined £ 80,000 and ordered to complete a compulsory education course, despite a three-man panel of consisting of a QC, an FA official and a former player or manager clearing him of any anti-Semitic intent.

The commission said the FA had proven Anelka's conduct was:

Abusive and/or indecent and/or insulting and/or improper and included a reference to ethnic origin and/or race and/or religion or belief.

We did not find that Nicolas Anelka is an anti-Semite or that he intended to express or promote anti-Semitism by his use of the quenelle.