Despite passionate pleas by GOC Moores Pine to The League of Nations to intervene in The Thanet Blog War, the members, meeting in The New Google Building shown above, have been swayed by US rather than UK arguments about the weaponry that is acceptable in such conflicts and have strongly up-held the principle of free speech!
In keeping with Thanetstrife's neutrality in the present hostillities , a bulletin issued in Silicon Valley on 5th March 2008, rather than at The Victoria Plaza in London, is shown below, courtesy of one of our correspondents:
"In the autumn of 2005, I wrote a column welcoming the arrival of the citizen journalist as a much-needed boost to an increasingly moribund democratic process in the UK. I had been running a blog, Thanet Life, for two years before its popularity encouraged me to roll up my sleeves and run as a local councillor in last May's local elections.Perhaps thanks in part to my blogging, I won in my home town - a vindication, I thought, of this communications medium. But I've been proved wrong.
Last month, I reluctantly suspended my weblog. Why? Because I'd had enough of the constant flow of insults and defamation. Worst of all, my family was being abused in the street by complete strangers. "Councillor axes weblog" was the front page headline in the local paper.
Blogging has come a long way since I started in January 2002. Since then Google has bought Blogger.com and everyone who's anyone appears to have a weblog - Hillary Clinton, David Cameron, Bart Simpson and more.The citizen journalist now has a reach quite undreamed of until relatively recently and can influence local public opinion - and perhaps in some cases even the national mood.
But there is a much darker side to blogging, summarised by one of my own readers who wrote: "It is not healthy for people to have influence without consequence." He's probably right.Some of the attacks on me were launched in anonymous blog entries on Blogger.com.
Few people realise that with the rise of Google our own laws on defamation have flown out of the window. As a result, anyone who blogs anonymously in the UK can say anything they like about another person or business. We have complex libel laws in the UK, which govern the press, business and the individual. Yet it seems Google will defend absolutely the anonymity of a blogger and the content he or she produces.
I asked Google to remove the offending material. Google, which is also a UK limited company, answered: "Blogger.com and Blogspot.com are US sites regulated by US law. Blogger is a provider of content creation tools, not a mediator of that content.We allow our users to create blogs, but we don't make any claims about the content of these pages. We strongly believe in freedom of expression, even if a blog contains unappealing or distasteful content or presents unpopular viewpoints.Given these facts, and pursuant with section 230(c) of the Communications Decency Act, Blogger does not remove allegedly defamatory, libellous or slanderous material from Blogger.com or Blogspot.com."
I am told that even a court order from a British judge is not sufficient for Google to change its mind. So we now appear to have a situation in the UK where our own laws governing defamation, decency, libel and the simple test and protection of truth are governed by the more generous interpretation provided by the US legal system. So if I made defamatory, racist or homophobic remarks about an MP on silicon.com, I could be sued. But if I'm an anonymous blogger, it is acceptable because I'm apparently protected by US rather than UK law.
I reluctantly suspended my weblog because I'd had enough of the constant flow of insults and defamation.This is a deeply disturbing state of affairs. Like the posting of inappropriate, violent and offensive content on YouTube, this situation requires proper and urgent debate from our politicians.Margaret Briffa, an internet and ecommerce lawyer, tells me the position taken by Google not only makes no concession to UK or European defamation laws but is so one-sided in offering no help to the victim of unfair and vicious blogging that it seems to contravene the UN Declaration of Human Rights.
Complete freedom of expression is like opening Pandora's box. It's the online equivalent of cheap supermarket lager and people become drunk on it. Are we then faced with an internet fait accompli in a global environment dominated by US law? Is our own legal framework governing decency and expression really so impotent and ineffectual? Welcome to the brave new world of influence without consequence.
8 comments:
Rick, I did not expect to have to remove posts and I have inadvertently blasted one of your comments into the www ether and I have removed the other 2. You are replaying the material you sent to Thanetlife some while ago. I am not trying to run this blog to give you a platform for other serious issues; please confine them to your own blog. I do not want to put a block on your comments so please keep to topic or just read. do not become an 'irritating bloke' on Thanetstrife please!
That's the same Irritating Bloke who Moores banned from Thanet Life and who he is now quoting as his chief 'no influence without consequence' ally. LOL!
It is not a blog for "Other serious issues" ?
Thank you. A concession that the issues are serious.
But my intention was to place a Common Law Obligation upon you mate. And you just acknowledged it.
Just like I did with Simon Moores.
Now anon who describes me as the same irritating bloke etc
What I write publicly is subject of the obligation of the Laws of Misprision of Treason.
Do you say that I am wrong ?
Yea or Nay ?
And how about identify yourself under my Common Law rights to know my accuser.
Or Bertie send his comments into the ether as well ?
I think 11.19 is without realising it. Rick,drawing attention to a valid point you made on Thanetlife and I'll let it stand. I accept the points you made in the other posts but because I am unable to partially edit and am new to blogging I had no alternative but to remove the whole post. I might try copying first next time and just remove the bits that might have legal beavers on my case! Just trying my best to fill a gap till others return and run their blogs again!
OK Bertie.
You should be covered OK with my posts but it is, of course, your site and your moderation rules.
A basis of my position is that no one can "Own" the issues I raise.
Avoiding special mention of Thanet (which is getting you perturbed) can I say this.
This is history but includes my opinion.
In the early 1950s intelligence reports suggested that IRA were recruiting technical and science graduates to develop a sophisticated sabotage capability (independent of their alleged funding and support from the Soviet)
What is not recognised (especially by some anon Thanet bloggers who snipe like "I never knew the IRA were so active in Thanet" etc) is that the IRA were avowedly Marxist.
Their terrorist plan, captured by Southern Irish Police 1962 and published in the Scarman Inquiry Report of 1972, was based on being able to mount a CLASS struggle.
Their thinking was that the sectarian divide (rather as some think now about Poles being brought in to bring wages down) was being exploited by capitalism to keep essentially protestant workers low paid and catholics substantially unemployed.
This is why people should not be surprised that Stage Three of the IRA Garland Plan (the terrorist plan blueprint) was/is to conduct industrial and agricultural sabotage.
The plan included infiltration of and recruitment within the trades unions to support the plan and spread their avowedly Marxist views.
In UK we had what we now dub "Cold War Warriors". They saw the IRA as the armed advance guard of their overall paranoia about reds under beds.
One of these cold war warriors was Airey Neave (who gets his mention on my blog)
My own view is that those cold war warriors and the military command were totally intellectually ill equipped to confront what was not a terrorist but a full assymetric warfare plan.
Bloody Sunday caused a wave of recruitment to the IRA. On your threads I mention an Anton Turkul ( basically to see if you knew what I was talking about you might enjoy the joke)
Turkul involved in the Vatican ratlines for escaping nazi war criminals. Some of these were of use to the UK and USA. In things like Harlow Nuclear research (which came in the constituency wangled for Airey Neave). But Turkul put his ringers in amongst the Nazis so he established a Soviet spy ring right in USA and UK nuclear and intelligence circles.
The IRA must have been wise to that process. So rather than allow ringers who would ride in amongst the wave of post Bloody Sunday popular recruitment, they spilt from the Provos and went to Official IRA ceasefire.
But the OIRA (in spite of it being brilliant strategy as they went to ceasefire and left UK to be dragged into the moral abyss, against Provo, as UK forces increasingly broke the principle of obeying law to enforce law ... FRU etc)
But the OIRA could not contain its command. It became the Worker Party of Ireland with trade union links. And the INLA broke away to mount their own campaign which included killing Airey Neave.
The question is whether INLA took more than bomb and bullet capability at their break from OIRA. Did they take the sabotage capability ?
Resuming the Anton Turkul methods theme. When Neave, his paramilitary recruiter Butler etc, involved in 1970s plans allegedly to overthrow Prime Minister Harold Wilson by armed insurrection. be it a fantasy plan or not they allegedly formed a network of cells armed by the issue of firearms certs by sympathetic Chief constables.
And the question is who rode in on that apparently right wing recruitment ?
Supposing we had locally a cell of the Unison Insurrectionist Network ? You might assume they all right wing simpletons who think they could overthow democracy and prescribe a govt of national unity but as I say, in their imaginary garden seek a real toad.
Supposing a member of such a cell conducted sabotage for which there is a prima facie case.
Supposing he is a British citizen.
Then his activity would amount to "Acts, with intent, tending to weaken the ability of the Realm to resist an enemy".
The law places an obligation (not a choice to do nothing is a life imprisonable offence) on any person with knowledge to report to a Constable or to a Justice of the Peace.
In my case I made a crime complaint. It was repeatedly refused and became subject of a request from Kent Police Authority on Chief constable for inquiry and report.
He did not report. And the Home Secretary refused to compel the report.
general de Chasterlain, Head of the independent arms decommissioners in Ulster, recorded his concerns with the Northern Ireland Secretary.
UK had entered into a peace agreement in which Tony Blair only required terrorist declaration and decommissioning of the existing definitions of firearm, explosive and ammunition. Sabotage was a planned weapon system and had been put beyond De Chasterlains terms of reference because Blair did not put it in the Good Friday Agreement.
The press have expressed interest in that broader point above. That sabotage should have been included as a weapon system for declaration.
It was not until April 2005, during election, that Tony Blair directed a letter to me informaing me that he had ordered copies of my reports to be copied to the Northern Ireland Secrtary.
I then made an application under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 direct to Blair that he compel inquiry into the general case of history of unreliability of backup generators (including the nuclear incident, leading to four billion pounds worth of decommissioning, at Dounreay 1998 and the close call at Hunterston B in 1998 etc)
Blair transferred the request in time to John Reid Home Secretary. Who resigned without giving a decision.
I would ask people (and there may be fair minded readers in Thanet) to put themselves in the pace of the parenhts of a child patient at Guys in 1995. The child has survived surgery and is in post op ICU.
The hospital backup genny goes rogue. Its control system has auto control over the hospital incoming mains breakers (which it would open in an emergency so hospital backuppower does not try supplying national grid)
The system opened the breakers whilst mains electric was available. IE The backup system swicthed power off the hospital.
It could not be over switched and so the automatic sequence continued. The backup generator started and ran for about twenty minutes till its local supply of diesel ran out. So there appears to have been a fault with fuel being pumped from main storage diesel to the local tank.
This sequence at Guys in 95 was exactly the same as an incident on taht same installation in 87. How had the three fault rogue sequence got back into the repaired system ???
But for the parents the sequence was fear as mains cut off, relief as backup power kicked in followed by utter despair as all power failed twenty minutes a later and their child on life support died.
I think the hand of man was involved in that failure. A saboteur.
I also think that around 100 men in Thanet have knowledge of the truth of this. In my view that would include both workforce and management (and by recent information gleaned from echo sounding on blog ... directors)
If my maths is sound then on average no one blogging in Thanet is more than second hearsay from this truth.
In my opinion it is a truth about a child murderer and God knows what else.
I have information suggesting that one Thanet man reported sabotage activity and kept it quiet in exchange for not being included in a company redundancy scheme. That he went along with company plans to defend market share by not giving a product warning.
But the nature of the matter is subject to Common Law and I have laid an information.
Anyone in Thanet with knowledge and keeps quiet is committing a life imprisonable offence.
My wish would be that Kent Police put their hands up to error.
I have assured them that if they do that. I get behind them 100%. It is not about being vindicated it is about a threat to all of us.
And I would like to see a really nasty bit of Special Branch work set loose in Thanet.
In the name of the Queen speak or go to prison for life.
No more ever on the touchline never on the pitch Thanet. Get on the pitch or loose your liberty Thanet.
If someone with substance want to say I am wrong. They can certainly put it on thread. But they should also lay their information with the Thanet Bench.
Sometimes it is necessary to hang out the chin and the little men take a swipe. But they are little men. All they have is the sneer at their perception of the strong man stumbling.
I want any one of the signatories to a factory petition of 1987 to come forward.
It is not just the anon Thanet bloggers who are moral cowards.
Think of that child in Guys.
Think how much worse if a similar fault hit a nuclear shut down backup supply. Chernobyl.
It must be absolutely crazy that the Health and safety at Work Act does not even designate failures of hospital emergency power as reportable incidents for mandatory investigation. I am trying to change that law.
It has to be crazy that the nuclear inspectorate investigating the backup failure leading to the nuclear incident at Dounreay (actually three incidents) has no case reference to simlar incidents in cvil keypoints like hospitals because there has been no investigations.
I willmention one Thanet name. Ladyman. In the context of a "Something for something" society he was asked to continue the casework of Jonathan Aitken re unreliable backup power.
And since seven million of public funds was being given in grant aid from the public perhaps an explanation from the company to the public would represent somethning for something fair play and sense.
But Ladyman's position was that the death of a child patienmt at Guys is not his concern.
Aitken, even given Pinay Cercle and a fib or two, is still a better man than the Labour MP.
That is my position. Now will the anonymous snipers come out from under their stones.
My own view is that if the British Army formed a special forces unit to combat the Stage Three sabotage threat they should never have stood it down in 1972 ? And if former members, seconded to civilian occupations, of such a unit feel the threat remained after OIRA ceasefire then the price may be being an old dinosaur out of step with govt strategy.
One such dinosaur went to MI5 and said he thought IRA were about to engage asymmtric warfare with an attack on mains electricity distribution. The police called him unduly imaginative. How embarrasing for police when pre-emptive arrests occurred three months later (1996).
If they had cut mains (and their plan would have caused a six month blackout) then we would have been praying that the collapse of energy distribution did not expose a flawed backup system at nuclear power plant. Because if that had happened then six months would have been irrelevant. We would have been on a three century nuclear set aside evacuation.
But if a person thinks the word Gippo is a far more important issue then I reckon them a pratt.
The suspect figure of 1987 was 380 machines. I understand that, through failures during maintenance runs etc, about 100 may have come to light.
And I am not wrong.
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