Not so free speech - and what about the hidden 'extras'?

Last week I was at a meeting where the proposition for a Speakers’ Corner in Douglas came up (see http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/should-douglas-get-a-speakers-corner-1-6105204 ). Seems one of the attendees had been approached about joining the censorship (sorry.. ’coordinating) committee, and some of the others had previous experience of Douglas’s particular take on ‘public/private partnerships’ for screwing up the lives of ordinary citizens, so the discussion was….well, full and frank!

By the way, to get an idea of the real proposal, and who is behind it, it might be best to ignore the puff piece from Douglas Degeneracy Parsnips which our ‘local’ press ran in whole and see the earlier http://www.speakerscornertrust.org/8251/a-speakers-corner-for-the-isle-of-man/ , where the real movers and shakers announced it to their allies.

The project interests me, though hardly for any of the pseudo-reasons this pseudo-public body would like. Obviously, as an outspoken advocate for free speech, the possibility of at least one island venue where that is finally possible would be nice. Equally obviously, as none of the partners have any interest in freedom of expression or movement (except how to stop it) I cannot imagine them creating one.

Here’s an interesting experiment for anyone who wonders why…

Go to any one of our crapital city’s shopping centres – all built at great public expense and inconvenience, including the compulsory purchase or forcible closure by other means of the small retail premises which used to be there - and take a book with you. Sit down on one of the benches and read it. Also keep an eye on the second hand of your wristwatch to time what happens next.

As most of the retail units are empty, and there are rarely any shoppers, it will surprise you, and enlighten you considerably as to the real nature of a society in which public bodies (nominally controlled by taxpayers and voters) pass all real power to corporate bodies who answer to nobody (least of all their clients/customers or shareholders).

Which leaves me wondering what the real game is, because the other thing to consider is that optimum control of punters passing through a retail area in order to ensure maximum spending in minimal time and with minimal expenditure is crucial to it. So why would a blatantly commercial enterprise disrupt that with an activity which clogs up the pavement, generates no direct income, and distracts potential punters who might be throwing away their earnings on expensive tat instead?

Perhaps the answer is that we are about to be distracted into giving away any real rights of free speech and assembly.

In the ‘old’ Strand Street it was possible to stop and shoot the breeze with folk you met, even hand out leaflets for good causes or ask the public to sign petitions. Nobody worried, and the police rarely moved you on, just as long as you didn’t physically inhibit passers-by doing serious shopping. Similarly, the Sally Ann and other musicians, for example, played Xmas carols, and again, as long as they didn’t huddle in shop doorways and block the way in or out neither shopkeepers nor the public complained.

About ten years ago that started changing, to the extent that now only pointless and ineffective charities or campaign groups can mount ‘actions’ and buskers have to audition in front of some clueless Douglas Council committee, leaving only the worst free to perform. There is no legal precedent for this, it just happened because civil servants and local politicians were too dumb or lazy to question it when the business sector ‘suggested’ that it might be more ‘efficient’.

So, once DDP & Co have assigned us grateful peasants one corner to spout (pre-approved and carefully monitored) nonsense, the thing to watch is whether they then use bodies like police liaison committees to ensure anyone expressing an opinion – perfectly legally – anywhere else in a public area gets moved on.

Who says that crime doesn’t pay? In Douglas, you might be forgiven for thinking it gets a public sector salary and pension.

Having a Stay Away Day

I see the itinerary for Tynwald Day has been released (see http://www.isleofman.com/News/article.aspx?article=46147). Oh, how……whatever!   

For a few years now, the only reason I look in on Tynwald Fair is morbid fascination. The colonial clown show itself – never watched it, never want to. How sad would you have to be to bother? And incidentally, if the Play People are now the clowns, then why are all those baggy-trousered buffoons with the red noses, top hats and other silly clothing still there?

But I do like to check out the ragbag collection of evangelical nutters, paramilitary throwbacks and botulism-friendly food merchants who gather on what is - nominally at least - a showcase of local charitable and community organisations, roped off safely behind the area reserved for visiting dictators to mingle with Manx civil servants and politicians hoping for a free foreign holiday. I just need to see if things really ARE that naff and getting worse – which they invariably are!

Not this year though.

One practical reason is that, after several years of either not having a stall or piggybacking on the stalls of ‘government-approved’ charities, the group I often work with will just be down the road instead, part of the free (in every sense) party being hosted at the One World Centre for local activist groups with international links.

The thing is that Tynwald Fair reinforces ideas of’ consensus’ and ‘democracy’ which simply do not exist, and why help perpetuate this sham? Behind the scenes, for almost a decade now, there are any number of subtle ways in which the government decides who does and who does not get a place on the ‘charity field’ and under what terms, just as the ‘right’ of any Manx citizen to present a petition also does not exist, because a government committee decides if any applicant is suitable and edits the wording.

There is a constant battle between an autocratic government trying to curtail free discussion and genuine community activists trying ever more imaginative ways to sidestep that. And this year I cannot be bothered to play this game, or even turn up just to poke fun at the witless and the government-sanctioned wowsers.

I would rather just talk openly with people – anyone who stops by - and not be part of a fraud which pretends economic, corporate and political interests cannot dictate (even if often by accident and apathy rather than design) how a ‘national ceremony’ runs. I do not share this vacuous interpretation of ‘national interest’, the slightly sinister idea of a ‘Manx national culture’ or the conflation of petty, pathetic völkisch twaddle with ‘Manxness’ and Manx citizenship. I am not, in short, an investor, willing or otherwise, in ‘IOM PLC’, and while even a token shareholder revolt at the AGM might be nice, it is not going to happen. Too many other shareholders are either too apathetic to look at how the company gets run, or not about to squeak in case the fat cats stop throwing them the odd Manx kipper. 

Woody Allen Jesus

And talking about censorship and handing over Xmas to the fairy-fanciers -Dick Puddlecote drew my attention to another little gem.
It appears that ‘Jon o’ fun Woss’ had the excellent Tim Minchin on his Christmas shindig. All very nice, but there was a bit missing, thanks to management worries about offending the immoral minority. Probably didn’t want Christian Concern and other cross-wielding throwbacks clogging up the switchboard with crank calls, or the Daily Mail calling for Wossie to be disembowelled….summat like that.
The story is that Tim was asked to produce something funny and festive. His offering was a witty little ditty called Woody Allen Jesus, which the studio guests enjoyed, but the studio management had kittens over. So it wasn’t broadcast.
Luckily, you can still see it over t’internet. At http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtPYcDgUHkM&feature=player_embedded! , for example.

Twin-set and Pearls Pervs - Are Your Kids Safe?

A while back (see Attack of the blue-rinse conspiracy theorists from September) I mentioned a paranoid campaign by the Mothers Union against the ‘commercialisation of childhood’.
I suspected then that the local twin-set and pearls mafiosi must be just going along with their UK godmothers. What I hadn’t realised until last week was just how serious this particular organised crime spree is. Seemingly, it goes right to Downing Street itself.
This BBC report for example (see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11923107) shows beyond doubt that not only are the deranged fantasies of superstitious, upper middle class whackjobs taken seriously by others who miss the institutional rent boy racket that passes for ‘private education’, but that the Old Girl Network is as prolific as the better known boys club in Westminster.
The more serious worry is that this also has shades of Tipper Gore and the infamous PMRC (Parents Music Resource Centre), the bandwagon-jumping, horse-frightening US campaign which caused ‘Parental Advisory’ stickers on CDs, and whose side-effect was to guarantee sales for any potty-mouthed rapper on major labels only sold through chain stores, while hastening the demise of independent record and video labels and stores in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. Thus, while principled musicians (from Frank Zappa to Jello Biafra) fought the censorship and exposed nonsense like the ‘Satanist lyrics on LPs played backwards’ myths (through lengthy senate hearings and court battles) the sexism, homophobia, violence and other genuine social evils the PMRC might have tackled actually increased in popular music.
Perhaps God-fearing middle American parents just don’t worry about that sort of stuff. Certainly they have a long record of sponsoring it.
But what really makes me laugh is that the Mothers Union is run by a bloke (unless Reg Bailey is some Joyce Grenfell clone of a gym mistress whose sexual realignment isn’t complete). Whoever he is, I don’t want him or any of his sex-obsessed friends anywhere near my child, and neither should any sane parent.
Note again that the ‘research’ they did is confined to Mothers Union members. Therefore it does not represent the reasoned views of well balanced, well informed parents who engage with the real world, but of paranoid ranters afraid of the dark and unhealthy interest in child sex some of their best friends haven’t managed to sublimate or deal with properly. Just because media-illiterate Christians are filthy-minded pervs who can’t bring their kids up that doesn’t mean everyone else is.

Faith, Hope and (maybe) some Clarity

Some days you start to think Ireland may finally be over Dark Age superstitions.
And other days you read garbage like http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/david-quinn-why-there-were-no-atheists-in-the-mine-2380534.html in what is, supposedly, the shiny modern end of the Irish media.
And Irish people complain because the world jokes about their intellect!
Of course, the biggest joke is that if Chilean Catholicism’s favourite son, Pinochet, had still been alive and in charge he’d have demonstrated his ‘faith’ by shutting the mine, engineering a media blackout (not that the current media frenzy in reality amounts to objective journalism), leaving it for God to sort out & opening another bottle of shampoo with whichever cardinal he was collaborating with to move local money out of the country and into a Swiss bank account.
Then again, Ireland doesn’t have a mining industry, so what would this pillock know about mining communities and their legendary ability to pull together against adversity and injustice? As a far more on the ball Liverpool fan put it the other day, for instance, can you imagine Thatcher’s rage knowing the only news stories in town on her 85th birthday involved miners and Scousers?
Because the UK also had a mining industry – once, before Thatcher – and UK mining communities also know all about the tragedy of underground disasters, the bravery of work colleagues and solidarity of families, friends and neighbours. Especially in the face of government neglect, or government spin merchants trying to steer the media away from the mismanagement of nationalised industries, a total disinterest in safety measures or the destruction of whole communities.
And I also suspect that, if only anyone in the media can see past the spin, there’ll be more stories like http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/9785/ , which gives a far better picture of the true relationship between mineworkers and ‘management experts’, and a far warmer picture of the true nature of workplace solidarity. Very similar, in fact, to many of the tales I heard from those in the mining and steelworking community where I grew up.
And interestingly, I can also recall a far more positive image of a mines safety engineer, and how his faith shaped his work, his relationships with the local community and in particular his determination to do his best for other miners.
This engineer was a man called Jack Smith – an almost cartoonish stereotype of a miner. Face streaked with coal dust, rode everywhere on an old Raleigh bike and wore a donkey jacket every day of the week except Sunday, when he wore his Salvation Army uniform and played in the band with my Dad and Granddad.
You’d never have guessed from Jack’s broad Derbyshire accent, modest dress and house, or the lack of a car, that he had a B.Sc. and was one of the key safety advisors in the local mine. He got his degree the hard way, mostly through night school, only studied because it was the best way he knew how to look after his fellow miners, never left the same street as his former shiftmates. He was the man who persuaded my Dad (who’d left grammar school at 15 because his teacher said kids from council estates didn’t go to uni) and also me (same story but 16 in my case) that being ‘educated’ didn’t mean being middle class, didn’t mean walking away from your community. In fact, if you were determined enough, it could mean you could contribute more to it.
Jack had some disappointment later in his life. Joyce, his daughter, threw away a good education to marry some drunken waster of a Scouse actor. A total chancer whose family, even after this loser supposedly divorced her, managed to keep Jack’s daughter, and later his grand-daughter, away from Jack’s positive influence.
Thankfully, Jack was long gone by the time his grand-daughter, another bright girl, had married a similar chancer (this time a former public schoolboy) who went into politics. In fact, if Jack ever knew how Tony and Cherie Blair went on to betray absolutely every value he held dear, even Jack might have lost his faith.
That’s right. Despite Cherie Booth/Blair’s famous commitment to Catholicism, her real intellect and drive came from a side of the family and a tradition that has been edited out of history. A Derbyshire miner, a Salvationist, a pillar of his community and lifelong Labour supporter of the sort Thatcher crippled when she shut the mines, and New Labour finally killed off.
Jack would have understood the solidarity and faith of the Chilean miners, would have been first down the mine to help them out if necessary, but (it is far more likely) would have fought tooth and nail to ensure they were never exposed in the first place to such criminal working conditions and destruction of community. Crimes which the Chilean government, burying all analysis of the true nature of mining community solidarity with all those fairy tales about religious faith, is trying hard to ensure we never hear about.

Gay humanism's own goal

I have to post an item in support of my fellow freethinkers over at the Pink Triangle Trust blog. Seems they’ve been the victims of censorship – ironically by others in the gay and humanist community.
It seems GALHA (Gay & Lesbian Humanist Association) refused a post to their discussion forum alerting people to the latest edition of the PTT e-magazine ,Gay & Lesbian Humanist. It’s a publication I’ve endorsed, and even written for, just as I’ve endorsed GALHA for years and written a couple of pieces for GHQ (Gay Humanist Quarterly), their now discontinued magazine. I’ve supported both enthusiastically because I consider gay rights to be a good litmus test of contemporary secularism.
The censorship seems to be over a reference to Gaytheist, PTT’s own discussion forum, which itself partly came about because PTT thought setting up another forum, where free speech was a higher priority than GALHA’s, might be useful. Funnily enough, I’ve also blogged on the earlier little censorship battle which led to that!
You can see more on the latest row at http://ptt-blog.blogspot.com/2009/11/censored.html, and as I didn’t previously mention the latest G&LH is out, I’ll also tell you that there’s a direct link to the issue and the Gaytheist forum (equally open to gay or straight contributors alike) from that item.

Muzzie, muzzie, muzzie!! Nobody died, move on

An ironic little censorship story has come my way.
What’s ironic is that the group involved, GALHA (Gay & Lesbian Humanist Association), was born from a famous free speech battle – the Gay News trial.
I’m actually a little uncomfortable going into this, because I value and support GALHA, but you have to be consistent in defending free speech. We can’t just criticise the fundie groups for their censorship and ignore the topic when it crops up amongst those we call friends.
Briefly, GALHA has an online discussion group, and one poster used the word “Muzzies” in a posting, (coincidentally not about Islam) much as you might use terms like “godbotherer” or “fundie” (or for that matter ‘Toffees”, “Baggies”, “Blades”, etc. , etc. in a footie discussion group, I suppose).
The post was disallowed, and it was at this point that members realised someone at GALHA must be censoring e-mails. As it turned out, this had been going on for months without members realising or agreeing to the practice.
Things got worse as discussion on the list continued, because everyone wanted to know what the ‘banned’ word was, but as it was banned the original poster couldn’t enlighten them, and the original censor didn’t seem to want to tell them. Eventually, for the purposes of explanation, the original poster was allowed a single “Muzzie”, though his ‘original’ remained censored.
(At this point I’m reminded of Mike Harding talking about how the BBC once allowed him two tits and a bum but no buggery during a TV routine)
Anyway, still following? No laughing at the back, either, because now things get more serious.
The ‘uncensored’ post happened only after a GALHA committee member had suggested that “Muzzie” is akin to “Paki” or “Nigger”, thus intimating the intent of the poster was racist. As the poster is another stalwart of the gay humanist world, who I've come to know well, I don't believe that for a second.
But all this fuss about a word, when surely it’s when, where and how it was used that matters. Excuse me saying so, but isn’t being scared of the power of a word a little superstitious? Manx people know where I’m heading here – but for the benefit of off-island readers, the Manx have a phobia of the word ‘rat’, as if the mere sound could conjure up a plague of them. A fellow Freethinker once reduced a Thought For The Day producer to tears with a ‘talk’ consisting of repeating the word “rat” for one minute just to prove it wouldn’t. Needless to say, it wasn’t broadcast!
And being scared of letting the world know there’s a disagreement is even worse. We’re talking about groups of thinking, feeling people here, not the dress alike, knee-jerk cults of biscuit munching, rug-butting, tax-dodging zombie worshippers we’re not supposed to snigger at.
But seriously though, as this is something I’m experiencing more and more myself, it worries me when people tell you to shut up because, somehow, arguing in public lets down the side and suggests to the ‘opposition’ that you have no clear ‘party line’. It worries me when humanist groups start acting like churches, where somehow ‘divine wisdom’ (profane wisdom?) filters down through the ether from the top and is not to be questioned. A lot like New Labour and modern politics then.
Oh, and by the way, I’m sick of being told that whatever Richard Dawkins pronounces is what I think too. If he wants to know what you or I think, he can ask us instead of palming easy money with pointless TV 'interviews' of faith leaders which are edited to hell and back to avoid either party losing face.
Atheist role models? Fuck 'em all. Who needs them if you can think for yourself?
No, argument is good. Argument is debate, argument says you’re part of a group that thinks and cares, that wants to know what you think (not tell you what to think) so that your contribution makes the whole richer and stronger.
I’m not saying humanism should descend to the Judean Peoples Front level of Manx evangelicals, where every third bampot splits and forms a new cult, inevitably demanding the same tax exemptions and access to government as every other two village idiots and a mangy dog howling at the moon in an empty building.
I would argue the opposite in fact. It is at the times we noisily, passionately argue in public about stuff that others notice and join in. It is at the times we don’t speak for fear of offending that the same religionists and their hopelessly hierarchical churches who claim offence take our silence as ‘evidence’ that we are few and irrelevant.
Oh sod it.
MUZZIE, MUZZIE, MUZZIE, MUZZIE, MUZZIE, MUZZIE, MUZZIE, MUZZLIE, MUZZIE, MUZZIE!!!!!!!
There, nobody died, nobody got bombed, nobody called a lawyer or a police officer.
So move on.

Soon to be banned by the wierdly bearded near you..

The jailing of fundamentalists for a planned arson attack on the publisher of a book about Aisha, Muhamed’s child bride, is as good as any excuse to look at nutters worldwide who censor the discussion of religion.
Handily, Article 19 sum up the situation rather well in their June Artist Alert bulletin.
In 2005, for example, they published a report (Art, Religion and Hatred; Religious Intolerance in Russia and its Effects on Art ) on the way that the Russian state has sided with religious extremists, often using vague interpretations of law meant to prevent nationalist extremism – which is a sick joke when you watch Russian Orthodox beardy weirdies ‘helping’ the police to bash anyone in sight at Pride events.
Article 19 say, “Police and security services can use vague legislation such as the 2002 law, as well as legal loopholes to instantaneously arrest and detain artists and close down exhibitions.”
The inevitable effect has been that artists now tend to self-censor rather than take risks.
Meanwhile the trial of Yury Samodurov and Andrey Erofeev over their Forbidden Art 2006 exhibition at the Andrei Sakharov Museum has resumed again. It kicked off two years ago because a nationalist religious organisation, Narodnyj Sobor, submitted a formal complaint. Samodurov and Erofeev face five years inside on charges of inciting religious and ethnic hatred under Article 282 of the Russian Penal Code for exhibiting works including a crucified Lenin and Mickey Mouse as Jesus.
If you need an easy comparison, Manx sculptor Michael Sandle exhibited a massive Micky Mouse with a machine gun at the Imperial War Museum at the time of the first Gulf War. He did that with the aid of a substantial grant, at the invitation of the museum management and (if I recall rightly) without even one rabid Tory asking questions in the House.
Elsewhere this year it is also religious conservatism hand in hand with bad government creating legal nonsense.
A Turkish court has allowed a case to be brought against author Nedim Gursel for “insulting religion” and “inciting hatred”. Gursel is on trial for his book The Daughters of Allah against which a case was brought earlier in 2009 on the above charges. Turkey is already infamous for charging many authors, including a Nobel Laureate, under laws that prevent “insulting Turkishness”, but Gursel says that the religious establishment has become the bigger threat against freedom of expression.
But even these cases pale beside the Iranian situation. Here (as if anyone needed it) is reason number one million and, oh, say 99 for not moving to Iran.
Article 19 reports solemnly:
“According to an International Publishers Association investigation, since the election of President Ahmadinejad in 2005, censorship within the Iranian publishing industry is clearly on the rise, with decisions about what gets published becoming more unpredictable, uncertain and arbitrary.
”Although the number of titles is slowly rising, the average print run is now only 3,000 compared to an average of 10,000 in the 1970s. This is entirely due to censorship. The Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance (MCIG) never officially bans books. Rather, if an author does not hear within two years, they understand that their manuscript has been rejected.
”In Iran, an author must obtain permission to print from the MCIG and a licensed publisher must obtain separate permission to distribute. In some cases the author gains permission to print, but the publisher does not gain permission to distribute.”