UK political events combine into a lurch towards Fascism.
The gagging law is passed. Called the Transparency of Lobbying Bill, Non-party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act it has nothing to do with transparency of lobbying and everything to do with silencing the government’s critics and opponents. It’s a huge blow against trade unions and other campaigning groups like 38degrees and charities. The Conservative-pretendLiberal coalition have attacked democracy by passing this law.
Fascism is described by it’s creator Benito Mussolini as corporatism – the unification of corporations and government. This is entirely the action that the gagging law continues to excuse. Fascism is right-wing authoritarianism typified by attacks on trade unions and political opponents.
Home secretary Theresa May wants to strip suspected terrorists of their nationality and leave them stateless. This is to be done through the use of secret courts. Theresa May has previously stripped dual-nationals of UK nationality so that they could then be renditioned, etc.
This is intended to be done to suspected terrorists. If there was any evidence against them they would be terrorists. Political activists and dissidents are suspected terrorists. Terrorism as defined in UK law is not necessarily anything to do with explosives or arms or similar threats. Once again the government is seen to be silencing it’s critics and opponents.
Madman and London Mayor Boris Johnson wants police to use water cannon and “get medieval” on protesters. The riots of 2011 were sparked by the police murder of Mark Duggan.
later edit: Home Secretary Theresa May’s intention is to deprive ‘naturalised’ subjects i.e. from abroad and granted UK status, of UK nationality. It’s still disproportionate since it only needs suspicion rather than any evidence and the powers are bound to be extended later. Politicians love terrorism because it gives them cover for Fascist laws.
Although reported almost universally as suspected terrorists it is actually “… the Secretary of State is satisfied that the deprivation is conducive to the public good because the person, while having that citizenship status, has conducted him or herself in a manner which is seriously prejudicial to the vital interests of the United Kingdom, any of the Islands, or any British overseas territory.” [source] That seems far wider than suspected terrorists.
Cameron and the UK government are simply hugely censoring the internet. This measure will not affect paedophiles since they don’t use Google to search for paedophile material. Instead it will frustrate users legally searching for legitimate materials. It is quite simply huge censorship of the web. It will actually – and is quite possibly intended to – have the opposite effect of assisting internet paedophiles by posing difficulties to independent researchers.
It is a mistake to think that the internet is not already hugely censored. Do you think that search engines do not already censor paedophile and alternative political materials? This blog is hugely censored for political reasons: you won’t find this blog in a school or library. Try searching for some terms from this blog like “war of bullshit”. [Just realised that it works on Google]
There are not 100,000 paedophile search terms and paedophiles don’t use Google anyway. How can this be anything except a huge exercise in censorship?
If it is accepted that there simply is not 100,000 search terms related to paedophilia then what is going to be censored? There are elite paedophile rings protected by the UK authorities. Jimmy Savile and Cyril Smith were protected by UK authorities. I know of one paedo who was close to Tony Blair who is protected by UK authorities. When you censor the web, you are protecting these paedos.
Jim Gamble, former Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) chief executive, said that while Mr Cameron’s influence has “accelerated” the process of getting the search engines to ban 100,000 search terms.
However he said it was the peer-to-peer networks that need to be targeted if the Government wants to track down paedophiles.
He said: “Very few paedophiles in my experience use Google.”
“At the end of the day a pop up message is not going to inform, educated or scare a paedophile they know what they do is wrong, that’s why they are secretive about it that’s why they hide in the peer to peer of the dark web where they cant be found.”
Confirmation that paedos do not use Google as I stated earlier in this post.
There is a confused use of terms. The dark web is a reference to Tor, which is not a peer-to-peer network (like BitTorrent).
The paedos are using Tor not peer-to-peer.
[19/11/13 This story seems to have died very suddenly – there are only a few mentions today of yesterday’s events.
… Cameron claimed the search queries targeted, which were drawn up by child protection experts, were “unambiguous,” but that seems quite frankly impossible. There are reportedly as many as 100,000 terms on the list—for comparison, the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionarycontains 231,100 entries. There seems a real risk, then, of the algorithm overreaching and preventing web users from accessing perfectly legal content. …
[like (conservative or tory or lord or rich or falconer or blair) and (paedo or paedophile or nonce),
“straw rendition torture”,
“dodgy dossier”,
“misled parliament”,
“public inquiry”,
“conservative broken promises”,
etc. ]
Join the IWF to see child porn. This achieves nothing – police and intelligence services already have access.
[20/11/13 To clarify this.
Tor works by routing encrypted requests through a circuit of relays. The circuits change often. The Tor exit node is at the other end to the user and is unencrypted to the requested resource (on the open web, not if the target resource is on a Tor hidden service e.g. illegal paedo porn). The Tor user cannot be identified unless she has made a mistake e.g. identifying herself through an email address or has been infected as Anonymous did.
The confusion that spooks, ex-spooks, prime ministers and news reporters are showing between the Tor anonymity network and peer-to-peer networks is due to two issues.
Prime Ministers and news reporters don’t understand it and are following the lead of spooks, ex-spooks and spooky advisors, and
At the network level i.e. where spooks are intercepting traffic, they can’t distinguish Tor from peer-to-peer traffic so to them it is the same. {Later edit: 2 is based on intuition. It should not be taken as a statement of fact or knowledge.} ]
Confusion between Tor and peer-to-peer continues. Pursuing peer-to-peer seems a wasted effort.
The Internet Watch Foundation does not at the moment pursue images and videos on so-called peer-to-peer networks because it lacks permission from the Home Office. But it was announced on Monday that the watchdog would begin a six-month pilot scheme in collaboration with Google, Microsoft and the Child Exploitation and Online Protection agency (Ceop), so that IWF can develop procedures to identify and blacklist links to child abuse material on P2P services.
Given what we know about blacklisting, the lobbying bill’s demands on union membership lists pose a sinister threat
The government’s lobbying bill may be in trouble, but its attack on the confidentiality of union membership records continues in the Lords on Monday. To avoid what would have been a stonking defeat, ministers last week announced a “pause” on part two of this troubled bill, which would restrict free speech for groups other than political parties during an election campaign. The huge opposition it has provoked from across the political spectrum forced the government into this tactical retreat.
But this is no time to celebrate. The government has merely delayed debate in the House of Lords until December on part two – and it has brought forward to later on Monday the attacks on trade union membership contained in part three of the bill. They still aim to finish the bill by Christmas. Debating it in a different order is no victory for campaigners.
No one other than unions might be thought to be interested in plans for tying up union membership systems in blue tape. But there are wider questions at stake about how much personal data should be open to the state and its organs. The bill requires unions to appoint independent membership “assurers” from a list provided by government. These assurers, plus the government-appointed union regulator (the certification officer), and any other investigators appointed, will all have access to union membership records.
Any employer or political opponent of trade unionism will be able to make complaints about membership, which have to be investigated. As the extent of blacklisting in the construction industry has been revealed, members are naturally concerned at union lists being made open.
The government is unable to say why this section of the bill is needed. There is already a strong legal requirement on unions to have robust membership lists. Unions need efficient systems to collect subscriptions and they know that if there is anything dodgy about the membership in a strike ballot, the employer will win an injunction.
Freedom of information requests have established that no one has called on the government to introduce such a measure. And, according to its website, the Certification Office has received no complaints from trade union members relating to registers since 2004. On top of that, between 2000 and 2004 only six complaints were received – five of which were dismissed and no declaration was issued for the sixth.
Climbdown viewed as ‘humiliating’ after MPs claimed vested interests were being let off the hook
The Government has put the most controversial part of its Lobbying Bill on hold as it struggles to secure the measure’s passage through Parliament.
In an unusual move, ministers shelved for five weeks a debate on its plans to restrict campaigning by charities so they can rethink them. The retreat was seen as an attempt to head off an embarrassing defeat in the House of Lords tonight, where peers were threatening to delay the Bill for three months.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire, the Cabinet Office spokesman in the House of Lords, said discussion of the new charity laws would be put back until the week starting December 16.
He told peers the Government was “open minded about changing a number of aspects” of the legislation. After talks with ministers, Lord Ramsbotham, a crossbench peer, agreed not to put his call for a three-month pause to a vote.
Lord Wallace said debate on other parts of the Bill would continue in the Lords, and the Government still planned to finish its committee stage by Christmas. During the “pause” he and other ministers would “consult widely all of the interested parties, members of this House and the many others outside”. He said they would draw on the work of the Commission on Civil Society and Democratic Engagement, chaired by the former Bishop of Oxford Lord Harries of Pentregarth, which warned that the measure risked “profoundly undermining the very fabric of our democracy”.
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Crossbench peer Lord Ramsbotham wants to refer part of bill on regulating charities and thinktanks to special committee
An audacious attempt is to be made to delay the lobbying bill for three months in the Lords by putting its controversial plans for limiting the campaigning activities of charities into a special committee for detailed consideration.
…
The call for a pause is being made by an alliance of charities, thinktanks, faith groups and unions.
It is being argued that a pause would allow the government to get the bill right, and to hold the consultation it failed to hold before the bill was published.
Ministers argue that they have already made substantial concessions in the Commons to meet the fears of charities and pressure groups, who say the bill will have a chilling effect on their campaigning ahead of the general election.
Simon Barrow, the co-director the Christian thinktank Ekklesia, has warned the bill is too weak in bringing corporate lobbyists to account but unjustifiably limits the freedom of expression on charities, civil society organisations and thinktanks – restrictions that amount to gagging orders.
The House of Lords constitution committee warned “effective parliamentary scrutiny matters in relation to every bill but it is of manifest importance where legislation is of constitutional significance. The present bill directly affects the ability of people and organisations to engage with the government and to participate in political and electoral campaigning.”
The committee asked whether part two was necessary.
Lord Wallace under pressure to delay bill, allowing fresh scrutiny, amid concerns over gagging of charities at election times
The coalition government started to offer concessions on the lobbying bill ahead of a vote on Tuesday afternoon that might lead to proposals for a three-month pause in the bill’s scrutiny and reference of the regulation of charities at election times to a special select committee.
Lord Wallace, the minister handling the bill, has written to coalition peers saying he is willing to raise the threshold substantially to ensure smaller charities are not covered by the bill’s provisions that restrict the campaigning activity of charities during an election period.
Ministers have also proposed that scrutiny of the section of the bill addressing charity campaigning could be deferred as long as six weeks, so long as the rest of the bill continued as normal.
Lord Ramsbotham, the cross bench peer pushing for a full three month delay, does not appear likely to be accept the compromise, and will push for delay to allow a fresh scrutiny of the bill.
Lord Ramsbotham’s plan, with Labour backing, would mean the referral of part two of the bill to a special select committee, which would also delay consideration of other aspects of the bill.
