Jump to content
The Education Forum

History of Freedom of Speech in the UK


John Simkin

Recommended Posts

Snoopers' charter set to return to law as Theresa May suggests Conservative majority could lead to huge increase in surveillance powers

===

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/snoopers-charter-set-to-return-to-law-as-theresa-may-suggests-conservative-majority-could-lead-to-huge-increase-in-surveillance-powers-10235578.html

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 67
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

UN Human Rights Chief Compares UK Tabloids to Nazi Propaganda

=========================================================

By RT / April 24th, 2015


UK tabloids like the Murdoch-owned Sun that compared immigrants to ‘cockroaches’ recall the dark days of the Nazi media attacking those they sought to eliminate, according to the UN’s human rights chief.

“The Nazi media described people their masters wanted to eliminate as rats and cockroaches,” the UN high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said.

He singled out an article by former game show contestant turned-commentator Katie Hopkins, published by the Sun newspaper last Thursday, in which she wrote: “Make no mistake, these migrants are like cockroaches. They might look a bit ‘Bob Geldof’s Ethiopia circa 1984’, but they are built to survive a nuclear bomb. They are survivors.”

The comment piece was published just hours before a boat containing hundreds of displaced people capsized in the Mediterranean, killing 800.

“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,” Zeid said.

Zeid said the Hopkins piece was by no means a one off, but rather the result of “decades of sustained and unrestrained anti-foreigner abuse, misinformation and distortion.”

“This vicious verbal assault on migrants and asylum seekers in the UK tabloid press has continued unchallenged under the law for far too long,” he said.

Like the Sun, Britain’s Daily Express was also a prime culprit, he said.

sun“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,” he said.

“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 misdemeanor 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.”

Zeid said from a legal perspective free speech and hate speech were clearly delineated.

“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.

“Article 20 of the same covenant says: ‘Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.”

Link to comment
Share on other sites

New UK Law Could Criminalize ‘Politically Incorrect’ Opinions

=

http://rinf.com/alt-news/latest-news/new-uk-law-could-criminalize-politically-incorrect-opinions/

A chilling comment by British Prime Minister David Cameron suggests that even people who obey the law won’t be “left alone” by the state if they engage in anything the government deems to be “hate speech,” including “bigotry” and potentially criticism of homosexuality and feminism.

Preparing to introduce a new counter-terrorism bill later this month, Cameron laid the groundwork for the measures by remarking that the state not interfering with people’s lives if they “obey the law” was a “failed approach.”

“For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens: as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone. It’s often meant we have stood neutral between different values. And that’s helped foster a narrative of extremism and grievance. This Government will conclusively turn the page on this failed approach,” Cameron stated.

The London Independent branded the quote, “the creepiest thing David Cameron has ever said.”

According to BBC News, the new anti-radicalization laws could even ensnare those who voice politically incorrect opinions.

“Would those who oppose homosexuality or multiculturalism or feminism be accused of threatening values of tolerance and equality?” asks the BBC’s Mark Easton. “Could Russell Brand’s argument against voting be regarded as threatening democracy?”

Link to comment
Share on other sites

GCHQ SAYS CHAT AWAY ...IF YOU DIDNT DO ANYTHING WRONG, YOU NOTHING TO FEAR ...NOTHING TO FEAR....NOTHING TO FEAR....NOTHING TO FEAR (Gaal)

================================

New Laws Force Google, Snapchat, WhatsApp to share chats with GCHQ

Published: May 30, 2015

========================

=

http://www.blacklistednews.com/New_Laws_Force_Google%2C_Snapchat%2C_WhatsApp_to_share_chats_with_GCHQ/44232/0/38/38/Y/M.html

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

BBC: Media Disinformation and the “Substitution” of Video Images

Response from Complaints Director, BBC Editorial Complaints Unit. “No Formal Policy Which Obliges BBC News to Inform Viewers That Footage Has Been Changed or to Confirm When Asked the Source of Material Used”

=

By Robert Stuart

---------------------------

http://www.globalresearch.ca/bbc-media-disinformation-and-the-substitution-of-video-images/5454973

Link to comment
Share on other sites

ALL your speech is important = AND will be monitored public / private . (GAAL)

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Five reasons the MI6 story is a lie

-

Craig Murray | June 15, 2015

-----------------------------------------------------

https://grahamcluley.com/2015/06/reasons-mi6-story-lie/

=======================================================

Human rights activist and former ambassador Craig Murray doesn't believe the story published this weekend in the UK's Sunday Times. After his own website suffered a denial-of-service attack, he has granted permission for other sites to carry his article in full.

Sunday TimesThe Sunday Times has a story claiming that Snowden’s revelations have caused danger to MI6 and disrupted their operations. Here are five reasons it is a lie.

1) The alleged Downing Street source is quoted directly in italics. Yet the schoolboy mistake is made of confusing officers and agents. MI6 is staffed by officers. Their informants are agents. In real life, James Bond would not be a secret agent. He would be an MI6 officer. Those whose knowledge comes from fiction frequently confuse the two. Nobody really working with the intelligence services would do so, as the Sunday Times source does. The story is a lie.

2) The argument that MI6 officers are at danger of being killed by the Russians or Chinese is a nonsense. No MI6 officer has been killed by the Russians or Chinese for 50 years. The worst that could happen is they would be sent home. Agents’ – generally local people, as opposed to MI6 officers – identities would not be revealed in the Snowden documents. Rule No.1 in both the CIA and MI6 is that agents’ identities are never, ever written down, neither their names nor a description that would allow them to be identified. I once got very, very severely carpeted for adding an agents’ name to my copy of an intelligence report in handwriting, suggesting he was a useless gossip and MI6 should not be wasting their money on bribing him. And that was in post communist Poland, not a high risk situation.

3) MI6 officers work under diplomatic cover 99% of the time. Their alias is as members of the British Embassy, or other diplomatic status mission. A portion are declared to the host country. The truth is that Embassies of different powers very quickly identify who are the spies in other missions. MI6 have huge dossiers on the members of the Russian security services – I have seen and handled them. The Russians have the same. In past mass expulsions, the British government has expelled 20 or 30 spies from the Russian Embassy in London. The Russians retaliated by expelling the same number of British diplomats from Moscow, all of whom were not spies! As a third of our “diplomats” in Russia are spies, this was not coincidence. This was deliberate to send the message that they knew precisely who the spies were, and they did not fear them.

4) This anti Snowden non-story – even the Sunday Times admits there is no evidence anybody has been harmed – is timed precisely to coincide with the government’s new Snooper’s Charter act, enabling the security services to access all our internet activity. Remember that GCHQ already has an archive of 800,000 perfectly innocent British people engaged in sex chats online.

5) The paper publishing the story is owned by Rupert Murdoch. It is sourced to the people who brought you the dossier on Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction, every single “fact” in which proved to be a fabrication. Why would you believe the liars now?

There you have five reasons the story is a lie.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...