RIPA and the Further Erosion of Free Speech and Democracy – Beastrabban\’s Weblog
The Coalition’s ‘Secret Courts’
Mike [that’s Yr Obdt Srvt here on Vox Political], Tom Pride, the Angry Yorkshireman, Johnny Void and other left-wing bloggers too numerous to name have all raised the serious concerns presented by the Coalition’s legislation expanding Britain’s surveillance state, writes The Beast.
These have included secret courts, a Kafkaesque travesty of justice waiting to happen, where the defendant may not even know the charges against them if this is deemed a threat to ‘national security’.
Internet Censorship
Under the pretext of trying to protect vulnerable children from online pornography and paedophiles, the Coalition has also tried to introduce censorship onto the internet with measures so loose and ill-worded that it threatened to stifle mature political discussion and contemporary pagan religion and alternative spirituality and occultism. Tom Pride suffered censorship at the hands of the Net because his blog had ‘adult content’. It has, but not quite in the way the term’s used by censors and the media, where it’s become a euphemism for nudity and sex. Pride’s ‘adult content’ is more in the way of dealing with adult issues using satire and scorn.
This has been waaaay too much for the forces of the Right. More recently he’s had Daily Mail journalists harassing his friends and trying to out him as a Conservative Brit living in Poland. This shows, if nothing else, how desperate they are to smear him.
Police Harassment of Greens and Film-Makers for UKIP and the Frackers
And then there was the case of the local Green activist, who had his collar felt by the rozzers on the behest of the local branch of UKIP. And last week NetPol, the campaign against police surveillance, reported the case of a documentary film-maker, who was interviewed by the police because she had been filming an anti-fracking demonstration, and was therefore considered a dangerous terrorist.
Read the rest on Beastrabban\’s Weblog. If you don’t find out about the allegation that Hitler is alive and well and living in Compton Dando, then you’re wasting your life.
Follow me on Twitter: @MidWalesMike
Join the Vox Political Facebook page.
Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:
Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
bringing you the best of the blogs!
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:
Hush hush the brown shirts are coming and if they dont get one your neighbour will bubble you hush hush little one the brown shirts are coming sadly its all coming true jeff3
We pagans have had at least a couple of thousand years to get used to this sort of cr*p. We recognise it as the last, desperate attempts of the (current) ruling class to cling onto their precarious hold on their delusions about their own importance in the great scheme of things. Some of us are burying too many loved and beautifully-spirited friends and colleagues who have been pushed over the edge by the soulless governance that dominates this world. We know they cannot last. That is what terrifies them.
(Mike, this is emotional, so will understand if you don’t allow it. Love, M)