Civil Liberty

Amazon has been accused of funnelling “thousands of pounds into the pockets of Britain’s best known far-right extremist” after Tommy Robinson’s latest book topped its bestseller charts.

Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, is one of Britain’s most prominent far-right activists and was a co-founder of the now defunct English Defence League.

The book, listed on Amazon as “Manifesto – Tommy Robinson’s NEW Book”, reached No 1 on the site’s bestseller charts on Tuesday before selling out. It outperformed Boris Johnson’s memoir and new releases by Richard Osman and Sally Rooney.

Joe Mulhall, the director of research at the campaign group Hope Not Hate, said: “Everyone has the right to write and publish a book as long as the content doesn’t break the law. The question is whether Amazon feel comfortable platforming him, and facilitating the sale of a book that will funnel thousands of pounds into the pockets of Britain’s best known far-right extremist. Freedom of speech is not freedom of reach.”

No, no, of course we don’t believe in censorship. Hah hah, how could you? But Tommy’s a bad man so no one should sell his book.

Vaping could be banned outside schools and hospitals

If women were in fact having four children, two daughters in law and 16 grandchildren then they’d have no damn time to institute stupid ideas like this.

Ban both abortions and the pill in order to preserve some modicum of freedom in our society.

X is nerfing the block button: Blocked users will be able to see your posts

So we shall have eyes upon the potato again?

Sir Keir Starmer is to announce plans to “root out” benefit fraudsters by giving investigators new powers to access information about people’s bank accounts.

The prime minister will use his Labour conference speech to announce plans for a law to give benefit inspectors similar powers to those used by HM Revenue & Customs to target tax evasion.

Given that near everybody is in receipt of some benefit or other this then makes all bank accounts open to hte State. And whichever jobsworths they employ.

It will also give them powers of “search and seizure” of people’s property in cases involving organised criminal gangs that are exploiting the benefits system.

Nope, not going to work out well at all. Government can now take all your money anytime.

A free speech group has claimed they were kicked out of a pub after saying children should not be taught trans ideology in schools.

About 50 members of Free Speech Brighton were ordered to leave the Southern Belle, a hotel and pub in the city, during an evening of speeches on Tuesday, the group claimed.

The landlord is said to have disapproved of one of the speeches regarding the teaching of gender ideology in schools and asked security guards to eject the entire group.

Amusing, obviously, but. A pub is private property. Up to the landlord who gets served – that’s an absolute right, always has been – and who stays on the property etc. Anyone who doesn’t like those decisions can not go there again, up to them.

Which is the bit that so pissed me off about the smoking ban. Up to the landlord….

Rachel Reeves has been urged to impose an “exit tax” on wealthy investors moving their money out of the country.

Resolution Foundation, a Left-leaning think tank, has called for Labour to hit those relocating overseas with a capital gains tax charge.

The people are peons to be chaken down as the deep state desires.

Fuck ’em.

Deluge of abuse sent on X to prominent UK politicians in election period

If you can’t call a politician a cunt then you’ve not got free speech, do you?

They are, after all, vying to be able to spend 45% of all your money – seems pretty cuntish.

Mr de Moraes has plenty more miles to run before he hits the mandatory retirement age of 75 for judges, and has high political ambitions, including becoming president, a source close to him told AFP.

He is in part emboldened by the sweeping powers granted to Brazil’s supreme court, which it granted itself in 2019, allowing it to open its own investigations.

That effectively gave the country’s top court the authority to be involved throughout the entire law enforcement and judicial process: to investigate, prosecute, and adjudicate.

The one court to rule them all…..

The Brazilian supreme court has ordered that X be suspended in the country after the social media platform failed to meet a deadline to appoint a legal representative in the country.

Late on Friday afternoon, Justice Alexandre de Moraes – who has been engaged in a dispute with X’s owner, Elon Musk, since April – ordered the “immediate, complete and total suspension of X’s operations” in the country, “until all court orders … are complied with, fines are duly paid, and a new legal representative for the company is appointed in the country”.

He gave Brazil’s National Telecommunications Agency 24 hours to enforce the decision. Once notified, the agency must pass the order on to the more than 20,000 broadband internet providers in the country, each of which must block X.

Difficult to know how wholly effective that’s gonna be really.

The decision imposes a daily fine of R$50,000 (£6,800) on individuals and companies that attempt to continue using X via VPN.

Oh Aye?

Extreme misogyny will be treated as terrorism for the first time under Government plans to combat the radicalisation of young men online.

“Nice tits, Darlin'” is to be treated, by the law, the same way as blowing up an arena in Manchester?

This could mean teachers will be legally required to refer pupils they suspect of extreme misogyny to Prevent, the Government’s counter-terror programme.

Passing around an Andrew Tate video then?

And yes, that is it. Get dobbed in and you have to go through conversion therapy.

Ofcom should have the right to demand certain voices, like Tommy Robinson’s, are deplatformed.

So you do mean censorship then?

In the first six months of this year, Musk posted false or misleading claims about the Democrats “importing voters” to influence the outcome of US elections on 42 occasions, receiving 747 million views, according to the Centre for Countering Digital Hate.

Studies by independent fact-checking sites such as PolitiFact have determined that Musk’s claims are false.

If you’re not allowed to make wild claims – say, that inequality is increasing (it ain’t, it’s decreasing) – then it’s not politics, is it?

Whassa riot and whassa self defence?

Other than controlling the narrative that is…..

A Berlin court is expected to rule on the case of a pro-Palestinian activist who called out the divisive slogan “from the river to the sea” at a rally, in what supporters say is an important test case for Germany.

The trial before a district court of a German woman with Iranian heritage, identified only as Ava M, is one of several since the 7 October Hamas attacks in Israel and the destruction of Gaza that have examined Germany’s limits on free speech.

The defendant, 22, is accused of “condoning the assault by Hamas” by using the slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” during a protest on 11 October near the Sonnenallee boulevard in the capital’s diverse Neukölln district.

Condoning a crime can meet with a prison sentence of up to three years or a fine.

Views tend to diverge over who gets to define what can be said.

Very few of us absolutists around – incitement to immediate violence should, to my mind, be the only control (libel is a civil matter).

Big technology companies are “fuelling” violence by allowing aggressive and misogynistic content on their social media platforms, one of Britain’s most senior police officers has said.

Deputy Chief Constable Maggie Blyth told The Times Crime and Justice Commission that tougher regulation was needed to force them to do more to protect the public from harmful material.

Not letting people say what they want isn’t censorship, oh dearie me, no…..

Protesting students in Bangladesh have called for a march to the capital Dhaka in defiance of a nationwide curfew on Monday to press prime minister Sheikh Hasina to resign, a day after deadly clashes in the South Asian country killed nearly 100 people.

The oddity here is that the specific flash point has already been solved.

There used to be a system whereby x % of government jobs were reserved for the kids and grandkids of those who had fought for independence back in the early 1970s. You know, founding fathers of the State – or more accurately, of the political party in power. This quota was actually abolished (or at least minimised to nothing important) back in 2018. The Supreme Court recently said that the abolition was illegal so back it came.

The govt certainly didn’t want it back . But, given the SC, cue riots.

Govt has abolished the quota again – or at lesat minimised it. That should be that, right?

At least 91 people were killed and hundreds injured on Sunday according to Reuters, in a wave of violence across the country, as police fired teargas and rubber bullets to disperse tens of thousands of protesters.

But it isn’t.

There are other, more generalised, complaints about liberty, democracy and all that. So, riots continue even though hte initial problem is solved.

And, well, you know? It doesn;t have to be a specific problem that can in fact be solved. That can just be the trigger – but once the mob is roused then the underlying grievances drive it.

Sound familiar at all?

Channel3 Now, a website that masquerades as a legitimate American news outlet but acts as an “aggregator” for real news stories as well as fake viral claims, published the claim on the back of speculation which appeared to have started on X, formerly known as Twitter.

What had begun as a trickle then became a flood, sending the conspiracy theory pouring out through social media anew, where the name was boosted by thousands of other Russia-linked accounts before being repeated by authentic Russian state media, which cited Channel3 Now in its reporting.

Russia produces misinformation, does it?

Oh well. You know, they’re allowed to. Folk get to say what they want whether it’s true or not. That tax money gets spent on it – not that there’s any evidence of that so just assume – doesn’t change that. Folk get to say what they want whether it’s right or worng.

And there we have it. We’ve the BBC after all.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said those stoking the scenes of disorder “do not represent Britain”.

She posted on X: “Criminals attacking the police and stoking disorder on our streets will pay the price for their violence and thuggery.

“The police have the full backing of Government to take the strongest possible action and ensure they face the full force of the law.”

Very good if she means it is to be enforced upon all. If selectively, then, well…..

How did we get from three little girls being hideously killed at a Taylor Swift dance class to boozed-up, far-right thugs rioting on the streets of Southport? The senseless killing of children understandably conjures up a very specific kind of revulsion and grief. But this was not what was on display close to the Southport mosque last night amid flying bricks, burning cars and anti-Muslim chants.

It’s fine to say that those lads in Southport were not up to speed with events. Even, that they might have been mislead. You may or may not be right about it but it’s fine to say it.

But a little misleading doesn’t produce a riot. There has to be an underlying grievance, a festering, before something can trigger a riot – possibly even that misinformation that you claim did trigger it.

It’s not the trigger that matters, it’s the fester that can be triggered that does.

Again, it’s not even relevant that the cause of the fester is true. It just has to exist. And there are large numbers of people who think there’s something wrong with the country. Even, that their country is being taken from them. Whether they’re right or wrong isn’t, as I say, relevant. It’s whether they believe it and so it can be triggered.

So, why do they believe that then, Owen?

The English Defence League (EDL) could be proscribed as a terror organisation in the wake of riots in Southport, Angela Rayner has suggested.

It could be all sorts of things, prole, annoying, impolitics, even violent if you want, but it’s not terrorist.

But then give any government any power and they’ll always expand the use of it, right?