Liberal Outrage: You Can't Say That (But They Can)

Don't be shocked, but it turns out that our would-be Twitter Police are graduates of the Al Gore School of Leading By Example. Apparently, threats of sexual multilation and AIDS gags count as cutting edge humour, provided you're really in with the in crowd.

They're not even hiding it any more, they really are arguing that they can say things other people can't 'cause they're, like, licenced media people.

All of which makes this call for civility halfway between the Duke of Wellington complaining that railways will allow the working class to move around and a consortium of buggy whip makers calling for a clampdown on the anarchic world of automobile manufacturing.

It's the perfect example of how liberalism has gobbled up socialism. Here we have the party of the left giving house room to a bunch of absurdly well-connected members of the New Class complaining that they let anyone on the 'net these days.

It's the perfect example of the fraud of political correctness. PC was always about giving soi dissant socialists an alibi for sneering at the lower orders. Keeping up with the absurd PC euphemism d'jour is just the left's version of knowing which knife to use for the fish course. Being unconcerned about the impact of open borders on public services is their equivalent of the old aristocracy professing to know nothing about 'trade', such proletarian matters are simply beneath them, doncha'know?

For proof of all this, consider the Twitter Wars Bandwagon Jumper In Chief: Stella Creasy. She claims to be worried, shocked, appalled and worried again about fellow media luvvies facing rape threats on Twitter, but what happened when girls in Rochdale were facing real rapes? The Criminal Protection Service and the Police buried these cases and where was Stella? Chaining herself to the railings, or happy to climb aboard the Good Ship Diden C Nuffinkguv? Need you ask?

Stella's the fearless fighter against fantasy rapes, who doesn't want to know about real ones. Truly, she is a heroine for our times.

Education: Latest Score

Passive aggressive girly men want to control Junior's Facebook use, but if he can't read, then that's all the fault of society, Toricutz, Big Corporations and Mossad, and nowt to do with our £60K pa Net Nannies

Latest Scores From The Rainbow Nation Challenge Cup

Jailed.

Not jailed.

Apparently, the left's new slogan is 'Prison Works (Terms & Conditions Apply)'.

On the plus side, at least there wasn't a racial aspect to the Brixton shooting.

Supporters gathered outside the shop to jeer the emergency services. As paramedics fought to save her, one even asked a policeman why they were bothering as the victim was 'just a Paki'.

Dang! Guess we'll have to push back completion date for the Rainbow Utopia again. Doubtless, our Nation's Witch Finder General Trevor Philips will be along to speak out about this any time now....

Feminism 101

Julie points out another 'The Net Will Kill Us All' story. It's all good, but what really struck me was this bit:

After a moment of feminist outrage, Blair tweeted her reaction to last week's issue of More! magazine, which included an "inside men's minds" special. Blair's tweets were potentially defamatory and More! magazine could have demanded she delete them or risk the threat of a lawsuit. But they didn't. Instead, they retweeted her insults, cashing in on the free publicity.

Almost instantly, a tirade of indignant readers updated their status with vicious remarks…

So a femiloon slimes a magazine, non-insane people come to the magazine's defence, and this proves La Bigot is the real victim here. Huh?

Against that background it's hard to take seriously the authorette's whine that no one confronted her face to face after she slimed her colleagues. Does anyone seriously doubt that if they had, she'd have whined about The Harassment?

Update:

Link fixed!

Reminder: Liberty Is Not Actually A Civil Liberties Organisation

Here's Universal Shami preaching in defence of the vital civil right to parade round in fascist regalia. The thing is there's at least two problems with her position.

The first problem is that the pro-regalia tendency don't just want the freedom to wear the uniform of this nation's enemies in time of war, they want the state to repress the freedom of anyone who might think worse of them for being fascist weenies, lest they discriminate against these charmers.

Problem number two is that non-partisan campaigning group Liberty only ever seem to get excited about the liberties of certain people. If the right to wear enemy uniform in wartime is an essential part of British liberty, how about the vital Right to Comedy?

Was the gag funny? Probably not, but neither are most club acts, and no one's suggesting their performances should be interrupted by cops jumping out shouting 'Satire Squad! Drop the mike, you're under arrest'! Armed entertainment criticism would be a strange use of police resources at the best of times, but there's the other thing that there may not even have been an actual offence committed.

I'm not a lawyer, but these people are, so let's hear what they say:

Threats can be calculated and premeditated, or said in the heat of the moment. The defendant does not have to have the intention to kill but there has to be an intent that the person to whom the threat has been issued would fear it would be carried out. Where it is doubtful whether the threat carried the necessary intent a charge under section 4 Public Order Act 1986 may be appropriate. Refer also to Public Order Offences incorporating the Charging Standard elsewhere in the Legal guidance.

OK, so let's see what Sec 4 says:

The following types of conduct are examples which may at least be capable of amounting to threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour:

* threats made towards innocent bystanders or individuals carrying out public service duties;

Hey, I'll take a shot in the dark here and say that the definition of 'towards' requires the accused to actually address the alleged victim, not be tapping away on a twitter feed that the victim has to be specifically told to look for.

These airport guys remind me of nothing so much as the old joke about the woman who called the police because her neighbour was sunbathing nude in his garden. The cop comes round, looks out the window and says 'I can't see anything', and the woman says 'you can if you go upstairs and climb on the wardrobe'.

All of which is by way of saying, they must have gone to an awful lot of trouble to be harassed, alarmed and distressed.

To the point, in so far as a young man exercising his right to free speech has been seized by agents of the state on a charge that's legally absurd and morally ludicrous, it is exactly the type of thing a soi dissant civil liberties organisation should regard as nearly as important a freedom as the right to coerce employers into hiring people dressed in enemy uniform.

MSM Journalist Admits: We Suck!

Not in so many words, obviously. Still, it's good to see at least one jouno taking the kool aid IV out of his arm. The only thing is that this raises the obvious question: how does he square this with the MSM's criticism of that naughty old internet?

It turns out that everything those pesky bloggers said was right. The MSM has soft-pedalled on Islam - personally, I think other factors are at play, but let's pretend it was the lawyers wot done it: even if we buy the MSM's argument that some of what's on-line is potentially defamatory, that doesn't make it unreliable. The MSM was happy to use the bogeymen of crazed bloggers smearing innocent terrorists when it suited them, so it's way too late for these people to pose as principled defenders of free speech.

FoH: The Net Will Kill Us All Section

Yep, The Rats Are Running Scared: We got government ministers warning of the dangers of those evil bloggers, right about the same time it's revealed that the Prince of Darkness is looking at seizing the infrastructure of the net. What a coincidence! Meanwhile MPs aren't even hiding it: they want to regulate content itself - just like they do with books, newspapers and movies. Or rather they don't.

Nihilistic: Don't Mean Nothing

Plenty of libertarians have already hammered Hazel Blears for her recent remarks on blogging and, more specifically, the underlying implication that nothing good can come of anything which operates independent of the state.

Still, as absurd and/or terrifying as Hazel Blears' speech is in terms of what it reveals about leftist attitudes to liberty, it was also ludicrous from a social conservative perspective. Consider the chutzpah of these people calling anyone else 'nihilistic'.

What would a nihilist say about patriotism? Would he support the unique culture and way of life of this island, or would he argue that 'Britain' is purely a geographical term?

How about the family? Would nihilists argue for the vital role of the family in our society, or would they claim that the traditional family is no better than any other random collection of individuals living in the same postcode?

How about art? Where would a nihilist stand on the question of whether or not some art is objectively better than others?

The modern left's world view is best summed up by millionaire hippy John Lennon's dirge 'Imagine' with its vision of a world stripped of meaning. And now they complain that the right is nihilistic?

The MSM: Even Sleazier Than We Thought

I realise pretty much everyone reads Laban anyway, but there may be some folks who didn't catch an incredible quote over over there a few days ago:

Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council - Tameside holds regular meetings with local newspaper editors to gather information and stop sensationalist reporting which might otherwise start or add to rising tensions, e.g. in response to a Kick Racism out of Football campaign, an extremist political group wanted to picket a local football stadium. A local newspaper was going to print the story on its front page – an action that was likely to bring unwanted publicity to the picket and fuel rising community tensions. The intervention of the Community Cohesion Partnership prevented the story from being run and in the event no-one turned out for the picket.

Berwick-upon-Tweed Borough Council - The Berwick Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership (CDRP) is working with the local press/media to vet stories involving migrant workers from eastern Europe and Portugal employed in the food processing and agricultural sectors to prevent stigmatisation.

No room for misquote there. Government officials are scrutinising the media's output to prevent reporting of the wrong truth.

If nothing else, I hope folks in Tameside and Berwick aren't paying full price for their newspapers. After all, they're only getting half the news. But where are the usual suspects ? Amnesia Intentional ? Libertard ? Human Wrongs Watch ? These folks have spent years talking about the looming night of fascism, but now we have state functionaries defining what can and can't be reported, that's apparently not oppressive at all.

I guess this is what leftists mean when they talk about the Blogosphere being used for irresponsible rumour-mongering: people reporting stuff what happened without proper authorisation from the authorities.

Nuts, Nonces And Now Nazis

Libs must really be worrying about the whole internet deal. They've tried claiming the unregulated flow of information drives people mad and leads to perverts running wild, now they're claiming that allowing the proles to communicate directly with each other aids tyranny. And yes, the argument is every bit as good as you'd expect.