Beyond Irony 181


The videos of both my speech and my interview at the Berlin Freedom of Expression Forum have been taken down. This is not an accident. All the other speeches and all the other interviews are still there. Both series have been renumbered to hide the fact that someting has been removed.

Given that my talk was about censorship and exclusion of whistleblowers, and the lack of genuine freedom in western societies to explain an alternative policy narrative, it is hard for words adequately to describe the apparent behaviour here. The full title of the event was “Censorship and Freedom in Traditional and New Media: The Revolution of Media as a Tool of Freedom of Expression “.

I have written to the organisers to ask what is happening. It is conceivable there is an innocent explanation, though the removal from different places of both the speech and the interview seems hard to explain. Once I hear back from the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy I will let you know. I do not intend to let this lie.

Craig


Allowed HTML - you can use: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

181 thoughts on “Beyond Irony

1 2 3 4 7
  • nuid

    “It seems to be back now at the bottom of the list.
    Number 42”
    .
    Aha! So that’s the answer.

  • Mary

    No justice in the High Court for those seeking an inquest for Dr Kelly and none for the nuclear test veterans today in the Supreme Court. Shame on this rotten state.
    .
    14 March 2012 Last updated at 15:35
    Veterans lose nuclear weapons test damages bid
    The British nuclear tests took place in the South Pacific region in the 1950s
    .
    Nuclear veterans win appeal bid
    MoD wins appeal over atomic tests
    Nuclear test veterans can sue MoD
    .
    Hundreds of ex-servicemen allegedly made ill by nuclear weapons tests in the 50s have lost a Supreme Court bid to be allowed to seek compensation.
    .
    The court ruled it was too long since the problems – including cancer and skin defects – had emerged, for the claims against the Ministry of Defence.
    .
    The ruling related to nine “lead claims”, from a total of 1,011 cases.
    .
    The MoD denies the tests involved radiation exposure and that health problems resulted from this.
    .
    The group of 1,011 ex-servicemen has battled for more than two years through the High Court and Court of Appeal for permission to launch damages claims against the Ministry of Defence.
    .
    In the Supreme Court on Wednesday, a panel of seven judges rejected this bid by a majority of four to three.
    .
    /..
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17364359

  • Nextus

    It’s worth watching some of the other ICD videos to gain an insight into alternative perspectives. The BBC journalist and presenter Clive Myrie gives a passionate justification of the right of the MSM to censor news output. He highlights the Ryan “Gaggs” affair (in which a perfectly legal superinjunction was breached by Twittering perps, thereby undermining the rule of law) and the woman who was filmed parking in the middle of a public road in Bath and abusing and threatening the guy with the camera (apparently it’s an outrage that she was publicly humiliated). His argument is that social media breaches human rights by exposing private shame to public disgrace. Unregulated freedom of expression is allegedly bad because it embarrasses people who’ve done naughty things, hurts newspaper sales, and inhibits “creativity” (there’s a euphemism if ever there was one). Oh, and he casually mentions that St Tony Bliar didn’t actually try to control the media; instead, the rise of the internet decentralised information flow, so he was forced into “managing” it.
    .
    Mr Myrie argues that the internet breaks the law on news regulation, and laments the fact that people can say “whatever they like” under the clock of anonymity, and much of the time “they get away with it”. It shouldn’t be allowed. He proposes that Facebook and Twitter should perhaps have some system of internal regulation whereby people who leak information can be traced and sanctioned. He concludes that the internet should be filtered and policed, not necessarily by the national governments (though maybe the UN). He smears the ubiquitous counterargument that freedom of expression should be protected, as a “battlecry”. He also expresses anger at the support given to the “charlatan” Julian Assange by the Frontline Club, of which he is a founder member.
    .
    Censorship straight from the horse’s mouth. These are the people who are feeding us the news. Utter fucking disgrace!

  • Tom Welsh

    Yes, Nextus, that sounds exactly like the BBC. The British “Pravda”. It is run and staffed by superior people, who know what we canaille should think and feel, and never hesitate to tell us.

  • violetwhite

    Absolutely vile

    Makes me feel like you said you felt in ‘HEARTSICK’ – really appreciated that

    ‘Sometimes the horror of the abuse of power in the world just seems to close in, and I want to run away from the toil of blogging against it. To rage against the dying of the light is indeed noble; but also energy-sapping, and the light dies anyway.’

    It is like a horror story – impervious and domineering robots running the world. Makes you want to scream as they look through you…

    But we already have more by far than anyone still in the thrall of that mindset – theirs is not the power of love or truth or honour

    You have a true standing, Craig, and you don’t have to lie to yourself every day

  • Mary

    A Cambridge PhD student is banned for seven terms, ie rusticated until 2014, for making a protest against Willetts.
    .
    ‘The student, named by a student newspaper as Owen Holland, read out a poem that included the lines: “You are a man who believes in the market and in the power of competition to drive up quality. But look to the world around you: your gods have failed.”‘
    .
    http://m.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/mar/14/cambridge-student-ban-protest-david-willetts?cat=education&type=article
    .
    The full text of the poem. {http://www.defendeducation.co.uk/go-home-david-an-epistle-to-david-willetts}

  • Mary

    @Tom Welsh BBC Scotland too – lies and prevarication.
    .

    It’s more than headlines that have to change at BBC Scotland
    Wednesday, 14 March 2012 20:33 20 Comments By G.A.Ponsonby
    .
    So BBC Scotland has decided to correct the errors contained in an online article it published on Saturday.
    .
    Fully two days after one of the most blatant pieces of politically motivated articles ever published by the state broadcaster appeared as the number one story in Scotland, the corporation quietly removed the offending fiction and replaced it with fact.
    .
    The corporation’s decision to amend the headline and text on a Nicola Sturgeon interview piece is a small victory for those of us yearning for mature and objective reporting from the state broadcaster.
    .
    However, that it took fully two days before any action was taken on what by then was a piece that had most probably been read by tens of thousands of Scots, and perhaps even more English, is indicative of the malaise we have highlighted repeatedly on this site.
    .
    For those unfamiliar with this latest example of BBC Scotland’s very own unique take on what constitutes professional journalism, here is a brief explanation.
    .
    /..
    http://newsnetscotland.com/index.php/scottish-opinion/4553-its-more-than-headlines-that-have-to-change-at-bbc-scotland

  • amanfromMars

    [i] Rob,
    My point – it is reality – not Orwellian fiction [/i] ….. Courtenay Barnett 15 Mar, 2012 – 5:26 am
    .
    .
    Actually, Courtenay Barnett, it is also virtual reality, and in certain IT Networking Circles, akin to Post Modern Ancient Round Tables, are they also responsible for the Seed Feeds of Novel Source Kernel for what are ESPecially Astute ProgramMING Projects, which whilst not maybe being anonymous and unknown, may most certainly be well enough known to those in the know and anonymous, and with a need and a selfless flair to know.
    .
    I apologise for the may and maybe caveats in the preceding paragraph, but would point out that they reflect the truth in such matters as are revealed there, and as are known to those busy and active/HyperRadioProActive in the Virtual Team Terrain Fields and Live Operational Virtual Environments which deliver continuity for the daily doses of subjective views and/or objective opinions which deliver a fiction and facts for Phormation of the Future.
    .
    After all, nothing just happens, does it, for everything is made to happen, is it not, by virtue of the building on what has gone before?
    .
    And it is only natural and fully to be always expected that anything and everything built upon a spinning tissue of lies and half-truths, is a fraud which will always explode and implode in on itself ………. and thus is a new world order reborn.

  • Techno

    I saw the first half an hour and you did give away something that is TOP SECRET. I can’t say what it is because it is TOP SECRET.

  • JimmyGiro

    @Mary
    .
    Without supporting the BBC, this over-reaction would imply that the Scottish Nazis who make the distinction between the words ‘relied’ and ‘worked with’, are declaring that to ‘work with’ Nazis, would be an unreliable venture.

  • Komodo

    http 🙂 youtu.be/d1GwdXE7Xp8

    See what I did there?
    See what he did there?
    I really wouldn’t click on that link.

  • Storm

    Dear Mr Murray,

    I would urge you to distribute your videos on other publishing platforms to bypass YouTube censorship. Here is a wiki list of alternatives to YouTube.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_hosting_services

    Amazon Cloud is a fantastic way to keep control over your own content but this can be quite tricky to set up as you would need to include your own video player. However if one can run a blog then one can easily learn how to publish video on a slightly more complicated platform and it is fun to learn new techniques.

    http://aws.amazon.com/

    Here is the free player;

    http://www.longtailvideo.com/

    Who Uses LongTail Products?
    Do-It-Yourself Publishers. From the lone blogger, all the way to the White House, web publishers around the world have been choosing the JW Player for years to design the video experiences on their sites. If you plan to host your own video content or use a CDN, like Amazon CloudFront, then the JW Player is for you. And our huge library of JW Player AddOns gives you hundreds of ways to enhance the player.

    Good luck Mr Murray and thank you for all your efforts.

  • Komodo

    Whoops- *red face* If I used Youtube at all, I would know that youtube.be is the short link address. Kindly ignore the preceding and have a good guffaw.

  • DownWithThisSortOfThing

    Komodo, nothing wrong with a bit of paranoia 😉 It’s totally natural and expected in our current ‘climate’, in fact I would go so far as to say that it’s quite a healthy, and totally logical, reaction to living in the present dystopia.

  • DownWithThisSortOfThing

    From the Mozilla site regarding Collusion “Building user awareness through our work with the Ford Foundation…”
    .
    You just can’t make this stuff up can you? From the creators of Sesame Street (I kid you not) and the funders of the University of Chile. They were responsible for implementing Friedman economic polices in Chile after the ‘Chicago Boys’ take down of Allende. What a strange world it is.

  • Keith Crosby

    Just watched the Amazing Disappearing Video. Will you be auditioning for the remake of Zelig? ;O)

  • Mary

    Weapons of mass destruction discovered at Olympic Park. Workmen flee.
    .
    Any more there deep under those foundations?
    .
    http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4195414/Blitz-hits-Olympics.html 🙂
    .
    Suggest Barack and Cameron watch the basketball there. It will be an elevating experience for the blood brothers.
    .
    ‘A full-time bomb disposal expert was overseeing work after locals warned the area was previously used as a tip for unexploded Nazi ordnance.’

    Robinson and the Time Team must check it over. I heard too that Guido F and his pals left some unexploded ‘ordnance’ (nice euphemism – ordnance pulping you brain) down by the river. Now if that would explode, that would be a service to our microscopic ‘democracy’.

    WMD are held in Syria you know just like those held in Iran, Iraq, …… We were told this on Radio 4 Today by Mr Riedel of the Brookings Institute.
    .
    Warning over Syrian WMD capability
    A new warning has been given about the difficulties facing the international community in Syria about weapons of mass destruction.
    .
    Bruce Riedel, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington and a former CIA official, told the Today programme’s Justin Webb that Syria has been developing chemical weapons since the 1980s and has the “most sophisticated chemical and biological weapons arsenal in the Arab world” and “the means to deliver them”.
    .
    “If Syria implodes”, he said “many people will try and get their hands on these weapons” such as Iran, Hezbollah or Al Qaeda. He said that “until you have stabilised the country any outside force coming in is going to be a target.”
    .
    “Clearly what Assad government is doing is barbaric and horrible”, he continued, “but not easy to see out how the outside world can help transform the situation.”
    .
    Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen said that a year since the Syrian uprising began, outside powers will say they don’t see things we can do militarily that won’t make things worse.
    .
    He explained that people are focusing on the Kofi Annan mission who is trying to get political process going because the alternative would be a “continued spiral downwards into war”.
    .
    {http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9705000/9705865.stm}

    W

  • Courtenay Barnett

    @ amanfromMars

    “And it is only natural and fully to be always expected that anything and everything built upon a spinning tissue of lies and half-truths, is a fraud which will always explode and implode in on itself ………. and thus is a new world order reborn.”
    Thus – fiction spun – collapses as reality eventually impacts the false projections.

1 2 3 4 7

Comments are closed.