Civil Liberty

The frenzy becomes less surprising once we understand the way in which liberalism is under pressure, and how that pressure predisposes the saner political forces to look like freedom’s foes. Freedom is the core of liberalism. It is freedom of a particular kind: individual freedom. It lets you do whatever you want as long as you don’t violate the freedom of others or, crucially, their property. The analogy between freedom and property runs deep: my entitlement to do whatever I want is derived from ownership of the self. I am my own quasi-property, and in that capacity I face other self-owners and rely on the state to adjudicate between us.

This balance, between personal freedom and the freedom of all others, is already precarious , but in the face of the global crises we face now, it is especially under strain. Liberalism cannot govern economic inequality or ecological disaster, except by pitting the individual freedom of future or far-away others against the freedom of the currently privileged. Without democratic pride in our collective ability to rule our shared fate, the resulting policies look like sacrifice with no upside – I lose the (however hypothetical) freedom to own a row of houses, or I lose the freedom to drive a car, but even if I got public housing or public transport in turn, that wouldn’t register as compensation. After all, I cannot do whatever I want with those.

Therefore liberalism it is and the left can fuck off and die. Simple enough.

That’s not the lesson this particular socialist in Berlin comes to but then she c’n ‘n’ all too……

Far-right marches led by the self-styled “Danny Tommo” should not be treated like normal protests, the communities secretary, Angela Rayner, has said, calling the marches “intimidation” that should not be permitted.

Rayner said the behaviour of some masked marchers – who have blocked roads and transport hubs – was not an acceptable form of protest.

I’m wholly cool with the idea that certain forms of protest shouldn’t be allowed. Right against publicly torturing kittens to protest fossil fuels, for example. But if it’s the who is protesting, about what, then that’s problematic. Problematic to the point of fuck off, Honey.

Yes, yes, we’re all aware that everyone has some group they’d rather not see making their point. But that’s rather the point of allowing all to do so, see?

Young people who drop out of education and work should be tracked through a single data system to ensure they do not fall through the cracks in state provision, the former cabinet minister Alan Milburn will recommend.

More suveillance, more control, more state.

The unified database would allow schools, colleges, councils, job centres, youth services and mayoral strategic authorities to share information and see in real time when a young person stops attending education or work. The system would track people from the age of 16 to 24. Currently, monitoring and support end at 18.

They just can’t help themslves, can they?

Nowak warns that social media algorithms are “driving divisive politics” and should be curbed to protect democracy. “In the whole debate around cleaning up our politics, we’ve been clear about a ban on donations from those based overseas, a ban on crypto donations, but we also want much more scrutiny and effective regulation of what content is being generated on social media,” he says.

Fuck ’em. Really.

A bipartisan pair of American politicians is telling Britain’s most secretive court to stop hiding its handling of Apple’s legal fight against a government demand to break into its customers’ encrypted data, warning that Whitehall’s taste for secrecy is “needlessly” straining relations between the two allies.

The letter, shared with the Guardian ahead of being sent to the investigatory powers tribunal (IPT) on Friday, is signed by the Democratic senator Ron Wyden of Oregon and the Republican congressman Warren Davidson of Ohio.

The row dates back to January 2025, when the Home Office served Apple with a technical capability notice under the Investigatory Powers Act, which requires companies to assist law enforcement in providing evidence. The UK government demanded that Apple provide a mechanism to access encrypted iCloud backups worldwide, a call the company met by withdrawing its Advanced Data Protection encryption feature from UK users the following month. Apple’s challenge to that order at the IPT was later thrown out after the Home Office withdrew the original notice and issued a narrower one targeting only British users’ data.

They tried to break encryption on worldwide data? What on Earth were they thinking of?

This before even the thought that Apple doesn’t actually have the key to any of the encryption…..

Esther Rantzen now ‘too physically fragile’ to end her life in Switzerland

If she dies while in transport isn’t that job done?

but of course we’re not supposed to think that way, are we? Instead the announcement comes as Parliament votes on the issue – this is political manipulation.

Doctors should not be involved in ending lives, says Archbishop of Canterbury

Kill them all, God will know his own? You know, don’t bother to listen to those doctors things, just inject everyone?

‘Mazin’ly, it’s actually a bishop with the right idea:

She wrote: “If passed, the Bill will signal that we are a society that believes that some lives are not worth living. That would become our state-endorsed position, and the NHS would be active in its delivery.”

But then the soft left at least – the Fabians, all that lot – has believed this for well over a century. Eugenics was very Webbs.

Backers of the bill have stressed that MPs should see the vote as a moment to assert the Commons’ decision-making power, rather than rerun the arguments.

Not that it’s a good one. Don’t actually cnosider whether it’s a good idea to kill everyone or not, just impose it because of those bastards questioning your authoritah. You know, Cartman logic.

The populist, far-right, anti-immigration Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has surged to a resounding victory

What happens if the people decide to do something the people who promote democracy don’t like?

The US, famously, has very little protection for workers over being fired.

A federal judge has declined to stop the Pentagon from firing journalists who say they were illegally punished for speaking out about the need for the Stars and Stripes publication to maintain its editorial independence.

The ruling by US district judge Trevor McFadden allows the Pentagon to proceed for now in exerting greater editorial control over the historically independent military news outlet.

They’re trying to claim that journos are soms especially protected species?

The journalists are unlikely to prove that the Pentagon violated their first amendment free speech rights, according to McFadden, a Donald Trump appointee. He said Stars and Stripes’ editorial independence “is not at stake here”.

“Plaintiffs argue that their termination will chill the protected expression of themselves and others at Stripes,” McFadden wrote. “Plaintiffs have failed to demonstrate a chill here.”

Now that’s truly exotic. The First means you can never fire a journalist?

Since Britain’s offshore secrecy jurisdictions caved in to pressure from Westminster to embrace corporate transparency, finding out who owns a company in one of these island havens is, in theory at least, a piece of cake.

Take the Cayman Islands.

All you have to do is show that you have a “legitimate interest” in the data by proving that you are a researcher, journalist, member of a civil society group or a business person considering a transaction with the subject of your inquiry.

So, I’m a member of “Against Animal Testing” and that’s a civil society group. I’m looking for evidence about the home address of the people who run the – legally required, don’t forget – animal testing labs. So I can send the boys ’round. Gimmie.

Or, say, I’m Spud, of a group which I founded myself, and I’m important, so gimmie.

It’s not a grand justification, is it?

Iran has taken the first step towards criminalising contact with foreign media, in a move human rights groups have said attempts to “sever the entire Iranian society from the rest of the world”.

For journalists, researchers and even ordinary citizens, the proposed law being discussed by Iranian lawmakers this month could make speaking to international audiences and groups a potential criminal act and restrict coverage of events such as January’s mass anti-regime protests.

Even social media platforms that the regime considers to be “financed” by another country, such as Instagram and X, would fall under the bill, said Moein Khazaeli, an Iranian human rights lawyer at Dadban, a legal counselling centre for Iranian activists.

Given how the Greens do go on about foreign billionaires controlling our media and the need for govt to properly moderate the media etc. A policy for them.

And, yes they would, if they thought they could get away with it.

It’s just that they’re not biased in favour of Christianity these days:

When Stephen Gray, a retired police officer, was told he would be charged with a criminal offence for sharing posts online that were critical of Islam, his first concern was not for himself.

Despite pointing out he had only reshared the posts, as hundreds of other people had, and explaining he viewed them as political satire, he was found guilty of making a grossly offensive post on Facebook contrary to Section 127(1)(a) of the Communications Act 2003.
Speaking from his home in Darlington, County Durham, Gray still cannot get his head around the fact he has a criminal conviction for a post on social media.
He said: “I guess some of the posts may have been in bad taste. Some of them may upset one or two people, but I didn’t think for one second it would be cast as grossly offensive by the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and by the courts. Not for one second.”

If it ain’t libel nor incitement to immediate violence than it should be fine. Note the word *should* there. That this isn’t so does indeed mean that we’ve censorship back, the blaspehmy laws.

Gray was charged over the reposting of two allegedly offensive images.
The first had the words “time for mass deportation” alongside an image of a Middle Eastern man, who was in his late 20s or 30s, and the words “Children in Need”.
The image had the caption “12-year-old Mohammed recently arrived at Dover. Please donate to help him move from a three-star to a five-star hotel which has a better halal menu, free wifi and Sky and is nearer to a girls’ school”.
The second image was a picture of a rasher of bacon and a man in a turban alongside the caption “Fun facts about Bacon!” People who eat bacon have a lower chance of marrying a 9-year-old!”
Ultimately, the district judge who tried his case ruled the first post was not grossly offensive and it related to a political issue that had been debated in Parliament.
The second image, however, resulted in a conviction. The judge ruled the post was not political; it was about religion, and it was grossly offensive.

Fuck off. Free speech means the right – right – to be offensive. Fuck right off.

Including, obviously enough, the right to say things that are untrue, even those that are true but hurtful:

Speaking on the Alex Armstrong Tonight show, Farrow said the march was “not about gay rights” and had instead “become about celebrating every single sexuality that isn’t heterosexuality”.

She said this included “some very bizarre and unhealthy kinks and quirks, you know, like furries and bestiality and even minor-attracted, they call themselves minor-attracted people, you know, paedophiles”.

The remarks prompted an open letter signed by Polanski and Bimini calling on Ofcom to deal with the “dangerous” disinformation.

If she’s not allowed to say that then we’ve got censorship, not free speech.

So, Ofcom gets to fuck off then.

What distinguishes Reform from other parties, however, is its refusal to believe that words have consequences. Inextricably wedded to unfettered free speech online, its answer isn’t to regulate platforms that algorithmically amplify and normalise hate but simply to build ever higher walls around the targets of that hate

Free speech is important, yes. So, the claim is that only Reform are for free speech….

A cartoon for preschoolers depicting the adventures of a small girl and a retired circus bear may seem an unlikely source of parliamentary concern.

Yet a cross-party group of MPs has written to ministers urging them to examine whether they can stop Masha and the Bear from being broadcast in the UK, alleging it amounts to a cuddly form of Russian propaganda.

The cartoon, loosely based on a traditional Russian oral folk story, is one of the most popular shows of all time on YouTube. One of its seven-minute episodes, Recipe for Disaster, has been viewed more than 4.6bn times on the site.

However, the show has been criticised by a Ukrainian state-backed body and Estonia’s minister for foreign affairs as a form of Russian “soft power”.

If they’ve the power to ban then that power will be used…..

David Lammy, the Justice Secretary, is to implement legal changes that will see criminals accused of serious offences released early for the first time as part of Government efforts to prevent jails from running out of space.
They include prisoners convicted of manslaughter, rape, GBH and sex offences who will be eligible for release halfway through their sentences rather than serving the current tariff of two-thirds of their sentence.

Spend less on cars for people whose kiddies are a tad peaky and build more jails.

There is a point to this too. The aim of a justice system is to protect malefactors from the revenge of the mob. Stop doing that and King Mob Rulz.

More than 80% of under-16s in Australia said they were still using social media three months after legislation banning them from it came into force, research shows.

Surprise, eh?

But experts and campaigners say the research, published in the BMJ, shows that banning social media is not enough to stop children accessing harmful content online and that a more “convincing strategy is required”.

Clearly, abolish more civil liberty. Mean, obviously.

A significant body of research by legal and rights experts has concluded that Israel is intent on destroying Palestinians, including analyses by UN investigators, rights bodies such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and genocide scholars worldwide.

No bias nor partiality here at all. Right?

Teenagers under the age of 16 are to be banned from accessing “high-risk” social media apps while safer platforms will be subjected to restrictions, under a sweeping government crackdown.

What will happen – no, will – is that those in power will decide that safe means not showing stuff that discomfits those in power. After all, who would argue that the kiddies should see something as high risk as Nigel? Quite, quite.

It’s the very discretion that leads to the censorship, isn’t it?