Round three to Singh

It looks like Simon Singh's defence against the libel case brought against him by the British Chiropractic Association has taken a turn for the better for him. His grant to appeal after the ridiculous judgement over the interpretation and context of Singh's original Guardian article by libel judge Eady has been successful. For now anyway.

There's some comfort in that Lord Justice Laws found Eady's judgment "legally erroneous", although to me it seems like a typically understated legal description of an outrageous affront to free expression.

The fact that practioners of treatments which are unproven can sue a critic seems insane, and an indictment of the easy tool that our libel laws are for wealthy interests to silence criticism. The BCA claims that its treatments can help children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying. Imagine if a church decided to sue over someone describing the uselessness of praying or touching a box of holy bones.

This case should never have hit the courts. In countries like the USA where freedom of speech and public interest have much more weight in law (constitution people!) Singh would already have won the case.

The case is far from over, but hopefully Singh will win out - and at the same time shine a light on the BCA's use of illiberal libel laws instead of countering Singh's criticisms with proof.

More on the case at the excellent Jack of Kent blog.

Move along, no free speech here

Obviously our government has learned from Beijing on how to use oppressive policies to keep an olympic event running smoothly and free from inconvenient things like free speech. Well, bill posters at least. Obviously not happy with giving the police all the fun, it looks like private boot boys can join in on the action too.

Apparently it's not to protect us from terrorists, it's to protect the likes of Budweiser and Coca Cola from other advertisers from muscling in on their olympic advert territory. So police, council workers and traffic wardens can smash in doors to seize any material deemed by those in power to be offensive to official olympic advertisers. It's a true UK Plc law.

Who said that this Labour government were the bitches of big business?

Science not admissable in court

Facts are refused to be given in evidence and justice comes second to law. If any evidence was needed that the juduciary has become beholden to the string pullers of the status quo, it was in the case of the trial of the 'Drax 29 ' climate change protestors.

Like 'Justice' Eady's creative re-definition of the word 'bogus' to stack the deck in the bogus libel case against Simon Singh, 'Justice' Spencer similarly fixed the outcome of the case against the Drax train protestors by rejecting evidence about global warming as 'irrelevant', a key part of the defence. Spencer didn't make a legal ruling, he made a political decision, on behalf of a corrupt and dishonest government in thrall to a greedy power generator.

The filth beat 'em up, the beaks lock 'em up.

Repression in the UK

When the police are seen acting like thugs, often we hear the defence that it's only a couple of bad apples.

The policing operation at Kingsnorth last year had already raised doubts about the bad apple theory. Kingsnorth revealed a systemic culture of repression towards demonstrators, with police officers regularly abusing the law and using violence to shut down protest, under the watchful and no doubt approving gaze of senior officers.

The same contempt towards civil liberties was repeated this year in London at the G20 protests, when without provocation police charged peaceful protesters at the Climate Camp in Bishopsgate. People were beaten by those who are meant to defend the law, and one man who wasn't even involved in the protest died after an encounter with violent police officers.

Today's revelations in the Guardian show that the Kingsnorth story isn't over. Thanks to the police's forward information team (FIT) recording the demonstrations and Freedom of Information requests aquiring the video footage, we are able to see a police eye view of what went on, and through hearing their own words, get into the minds of the people who are supposed to be entrusted with protecting our persons and our civil liberties.

The language used by the FIT officers, the hiding of police identification and the violent behaviour towards someone who simply asked for their numbers illustrates that these police have nothing but contempt for the public.

It's easy to blame it on the bad apple theory, but it doesn't wash. There are too many examples of anti social police behaviour now to defend that argument. A quick search on YouTube is all it takes.

In Kingsnorth, these officers were supervised and this video footage has probably been examined already by senior police, but nothing has happened to these men who put innocent people into dangerous neck grips and hog tied them before throwing them into a police van, arrested on manufactured charges.

These police are not our defenders. They have no care for civil liberties and clearly get off on violence. They are enemies freedom and democracy. They have been given too many powers by successive governments through laws which are constructed in such ambiguous terms that the law can mean whatever a police officer says it means. We rightly agonise over the corruption of the law makers in Parliament, but the abuses by the law enforcers on the streets should meet similar ruthless scrutiny. At the minute, how can we trust the law with either body?

There needs to be a serious reform of the police and a new system of accountability, and offences investigated by a body with more powers than the pathetic and toothless Independent Police Complaints Commission.

There needs to be a start to regain public confidence. These officers at Kingsnorth need to be brought to justice. Watch the video. Every single one of them involved should be dismissed.

Silvio Berlusconi is an evil bastard

The Sunday papers sometimes prove to be excellent source material for illustrating the insanity and immorality of organised religion. In this story of Eluano Englaro I wish it wasn't the case.

Silvio Berlusconi's rationale to keep Englaro alive is terrifying, claiming that she is "in the condition to have babies".

After 17 years in PVS, it's unlikely that Ms Englaro would be in a physical state to carry a child, and will never regain consciousness to give consent anyway. Berlusconi is favouring rape, and possibly borderline necrophilia.

His position is based on advice from the Vatican, although I wouldn't be surprised if Berlusconi's real objective was to leverage other legislative changes to his benefit as part of a package. Yet Italians keep voting for the evil corrupt twat, and he remains a hero of the right.

Many ignore religion on the assumption that it's harmless and doesn't really effect our lives. The influence of the Vatican on this case, which could see a hurried change in Italian law, shows that the Medieval ethics of the stupid and the ignorant is turning Italy into a theocracy, forcing the dogma of faith on those who don't want it.

The UK is different, yet here religion also constantly vies for influence. Constitutionally religion has power. Bishops sit in the House of Lords and our head of state is ordained by God. Our national anthem is God Save the Queen.

Religionists regularly claim that their religion gives them a moral code. The evil bastards that favour such suffering as inflicted on Eluano Englaro and her family can keep it.

Give me humanity and compassion any day.

Deja vu

The previous post stirred some memories...

Dead-end legal action; scrounging to pay the costs; petition padding.

It sounds all so familiar...

Silly cults

The next time the police moan about red tape and endless form filling sucking the life out of their jobs, I'll remember this episode of our brave boys and girls in blue in action and ignore their whinging for the bollocks it is.

The City of London police, members of which have in the past benefited from church of Scientology's largesse, went to great lengths to hand a prosecution notice to a protester who refused to stop displaying a placard describing Scientology as a 'cult' at a demonstration outside the cult's London headquarters. What a pointless waste of time.

Even if we ignore the barmy interpretation of a dodgy law, teenagers are the victims of shootings and stabbings all over London, and some are found carrying weapons in public. Yet the police went to the bother of checking with the CPS before handing the summons over to a teenager who had did nothing worse than express, in a public place, his opinion about a club whose members believe in an imaginary premise.

The police interpreted the use of the word 'cult' as "abusive and insulting". Abusive and insulting pretty much describes the police's attitude to free speech.

Hopefully the judge hearing this case will recognise what a time wasting piece of bullshit policing this is and throw it straight out.

Free speech 2 : Jeebus 0

March 5th proved a fruitful day for human rights and freedom of speech. First, the House of Lords threw out a petition to appeal brought by religious zealots Christian Voice, who had tried to prosecute the BBC for screening Jerry Springer - The Opera. The appeal was rejected on the grounds that the case did "not raise an arguable point of law of general public importance". Simply put, the law in this case was an ass and irrelevant in a modern liberal society.

Then, in another small victory for reason and common sense, the House of Lords voted 148 to 87 to accept an amendment to the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill that will abolish the common law of blasphemy and blasphemous libel.

However, in a society where religious fundamentalists are never far away, there remains the risk of scary new laws to allow the faith lobby to try and stifle free speech.

Rowan Williams - religious loon

Punkscience beat me to it. Rowan Williams is an idiot. Sharia law has no place in a rational society.

If people want to follow a set of philosophical rules that's fine, as long as they don't force those rules on anyone, or demand that those rules require respect, recognition and protection, and the application of those rules doesn't hurt anyone.

The problem with religion based systems like Sharia is that those living in religious communities will be pressured to adhere to the laws and accept 'legal' decisions, even when there is no rational reason to do so other than community peer pressure and diktat from religious authority.

Laws based on the interpretation of ancient myth and rely on the authority of religious zealots have no place in the 21st Century. Considering the influence of Wahabi Imams in British Islamic society - an extreme and fundamentalist view of Islam which has gone a significant way in the radicalisation of modern Muslim doctrine - putting laws into the hands of these medieval nutters is dangerous and divisive.

We should be reducing the influence of religion, not increasing it.